Mariangela Settimo

My research activity is focused on the study of ultra high energy cosmic rays, hitting the Earth with huge energies, up to about 30 Joules. Their origin and nature is still unknown, although they are most probably produced in extragalactic astrophysical sources. During my PhD, I started to work in the context of the Pierre Auger Observatory, the largest ground-based observatory of cosmic rays in the world.

I obtained my PhD in 2010 at University of Salento (Lecce, Italy) with a thesis about the measurement of the energy spectrum of such particles. I continued my studies as a postdoc at the University of Siegen (Germany) and in May 2013 I joint the astro-particle group at the Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et des Haute Energies (LPNHE) in Paris.

Currently I am a Lagrange fellow and I am mainly involved in the search for ultra-high energy photons, that carry informations about the sources and propagation of cosmic rays, and in the development of new detectors with the goal of measuring the chemical composition of ultra-high energy cosmic rays.

Contact: mariangela.settimo[at]lpnhe.in2p3.fr