Lucio Piccirillo

Stay at the IAC: 08/07/2013 to 20/09/2013.

Research line: Cosmology and Astroparticles

Dr. Lucio Piccirillo is currently both, professor of Radioastronomy Technology at the School of Physics and Astronomy and member of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, at the University of Manchester (U.K.).

Prof. Piccirillo graduated at the University of Rome in 1985 with a thesis on the measurements of photon noise in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. He spent one year as teacher of Digital Electronics at the Italian Airforce and was researcher at the italian Telecommunication Government ministry until 1989. He then moved to the Netherlands as postdoctoral researcher at the European Space Agency and later, in 1991, to the U.S.A. , where he was Assistant Professor at Bartol Research Institute University of Delaware and Visiting Professor at University of Wisconsin. In 2000 he came back to Europe as Senior Lecturer/ Reader at Cardiff University (UK). Dr. Piccirillo is Professor at the University of Manchester since 2006.

His main areas of research concern Experimental Cosmology and development of novel technologies for astronomical instrumentation. He is involved in the detection and characterization of the polarization properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, radio detection of ultra high energy neutrinos interacting with the Moon surface and radio detection of very high frequency gravitational waves.
He is also involved in the following technology activities:
1. development of high frequency cryogenic low noise amplifiers
2. development of novel electron-beam lithography techniques
3. design and construction of improved sub-Kelvin cryogenic refrigerators to be used in astronomical instruments
4. development of novel quasi-optical interferometers

The main objective of his visit to the IAC was to complete the construction of the instrument TGI (30 GHz ) of the QUIJOTE project . His team at the Univ. of Manchester designed the TGI cryostat and his stay in Tenerife was planned to match with the construction phase of the components at the IAC workshops and the integration phase of the 31 constituent polarimeters .

Prof. Picirillo worked closely with the scientific project team in the analysis of data from MFI and also with the engineering team of the project QUIJOTE . The results of the scientific work carried out are in preparation for its publication.