Simone Mazza

I'm an assistant project scientist at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP) at University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). My current physics research plan is mainly focused on the study of lepton flavor universality by the observation of rare pion decays, I’m very involved in an emerging pion decay experiment, the PIONEER experiment, that will run at the PiE-5 pion beamline at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI). For PIONEER, I’m developing the high granularity active target (ATAR). I'm also very interested in the physics at the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) that is going to be built at Brookhaven national Laboratories (BNL). For the EPIC detector at EIC I'm leading on the silicon sensor development for the timing layer at UCSC. My expertise is silicon sensors and, in particular, ultra-fast silicon sensors known as low gain avalanche detectors (LGADs) that allow a timing resolution per hit down to 20 ps. In my free time, I love surfing and mountain biking in the beautiful Santa Cruz County.