Riccardo Maria Bianchi PhD, Particle Physicist

About

Riccardo Maria Bianchi is a particle physicist. Since 2008 he works at CERN, in Geneva, on the ATLAS experiment, looking for hints of new particles within the data produced by the Large Hadron Collider. He holds a Ph.D. in Particle Physics (from the University of Freiburg, Germany), and a Master degree in Nuclear and Subnuclear Physics (from Roma Tre University, Italy).

His work as a researcher focuses on searches for new physics, data analysis on big data, data visualization, 3D interactive visualization, computational physics, parallel computing, and in the development of large scale scientific software. Recently, he contributed to the textbook “Applied Computational Physics” (Oxford University Press, 2017).

He is a member of the European Physical Society (EPS), and he is one of the founders of the Association of Italian Researchers in Switzerland. He also coordinates the activities of the “Visualization” working group of the HEP Software Foundation (HSF), fostering collaboration among High Energy Physics experiments.

Riccardo is not only a serious scientist, however. He loves collaborating with artists and performers to build experiences that let people realize how wonderful our Universe is. He collaborated with the filmmaker Valerio Jalongo, providing scientific advising and data visualizations for his recent film “The Sense of Beauty” (2017). Currently, he is working with the theater company “Unterwasser” on an art installation at the edge of art and science.

He lives with his wife in Geneva, close to the lake, where they enjoy picnicking when the sun comes out of the Swiss clouds. When he does not think about tiny particles, he likes exploring woods and ponds to observe tiny animals. During the day, you can usually find him in his CERN office, crunching numbers, sifting data and grinding bytes.