Paolo Giubellino


Paolo Giubellino is an experimental particle physicist working on High-Energy Nuclear Collisions. Currently he is the joint Scientific Managing Director of the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research and the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research and Professor at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Technische Universität Darmstadt.
Until December 31, 2016, Giubellino was Spokesperson of the, an international collaboration of more than 1300 people from 163 scientific institutions from 40 countries.
He has carried several responsibility positions in the ALICE Collaboration since its creation in the early nineties, to be eventually elected Deputy Spokesperson from 2004 to 2010 and Spokesperson from 1 January 2011. On July 17, 2013, he was elected for a second term as Spokesperson of ALICE.
Giubellino has dedicated most of his scientific life to the physics of high-energy heavy ion collisions, in which quark–gluon plasma a state of ultra dense and hot matter, as it prevails in the first microseconds of the life of our universe. Moreover, he has participated in numerous experimental projects first at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron and, since the beginning of the program, at the Large Hadron Collider.

Early life and education

Paolo Giubellino, Italian, born in 1960, graduated in Physics at the University of Torino in 1983 with 110/110 cum laude and special honorable mention and continued his studies as a
Fulbright fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2000 he was awarded the title of Doctor in Physics and Mathematics by the Dubna Academic Council. He is married and has one son.

Research career

Paolo Giubellino has dedicated most of his scientific life to the Physics of High-Energy Heavy-Ion collisions, first in HELIOS, then in NA50, in the ALICE experiment and finally at GSI and FAIR.
He joined the Torino branch of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics in 1985. In 2006 he was promoted to "research director", the highest in the three-level INFN career. Giubellino has been responsible for several scientific programs within INFN and for NATO, INTAS and EU grants. From 1990 to 1996 he was coordinator of the Group II of the Torino branch of the INFN. From 1995 to 2000 and since 2007 he was responsible for the involvement of the Torino group in the ALICE Inner Tracking System project.
Giubellino has participated in CERN heavy-ion programme from the early days of his career. He was in charge of the design, construction and operation of the SCI-PAD detector for the NA34/1 experiment as well as for the NA34/2 silicon pad detectors for the Ring Counters.
In 1988 he joined the NA50 collaboration and worked in one of the fixed-target experiments. He was responsible in NA50 for the design, construction and commissioning of the silicon multiplicity detectors.
During his entire career, Giubellino has participated in several R&D projects directed to the development of silicon detectors and radiation tolerant electronics. He is also one of the founding fathers of the microelectronics group at INFN Torino
Giubellino has been involved in ALICE from the very first feasibility studies, and has later carried a number of responsibilities in the experiment, including Project Leader for the Inner Tracking System, Chair of Conference Committee, Upgrade Coordinator and, for six years, Deputy Spokesperson. He was elected Spokesperson of the ALICE Collaboration for the first time in March 2010 and re-elected in July 2013. During this period he led the ALICE Collaboration to the preparation of an Upgrade proposal for experiment, spanning the years 2018 to 2025. The upgrade project, which will involve 163 Institutions from 40 countries, has been approved by the Large Hadron Collider Committee in September 2012.
On January 1, 2017, Paolo Giubellino became the first joint scientific managing director of Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe GmbH and GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH in Darmstadt. In addition, he has taken over the position of spokesperson of the management of FAIR and GSI. In September 2016, the FAIR Council and the GSI Supervisory Board announced their decision to appoint Giubellino. Since January 1, 2017 Giubellino is Professor at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Technische Universität Darmstadt.

Science Management and Review Committees

Paolo Giubellino serves in many scientific committees and panels in France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Mexico, Spain, the Czech Republic, the Republic of Korea and South Africa. He has been active in International collaboration, and has promoted and had key roles in several programs funded by the European Union, NATO and numerous bilateral agreements.
Paolo Giubellino is also member of the International Advisory Committee of numerous International Conferences, including the International Conference on High-Energy Physics, ICHEP, and all major conferences in High-Energy Nuclear Physics. He has served as referee for several major international Physics Journals, among which Physical Review Letters, Physical Review, Nuclear Physics, Physics Letters and Nuclear Instruments and Methods.
Finally he has been referee for the selection and evaluation of projects for, among others, INTAS, Several European Programs, the Italian Ministry of Education and Research, The Russian Ministry of Education, the Government of the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Economy and Innovation of Spain, the National Research Foundation of the Republic of South Korea and the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Invited lectures and outreach

Paolo Giubellino is frequently invited to give public lectures on experimental particle physics at the LHC. He has delivered about 50 talks at international conferences and many invited seminars and colloquia about the results of his scientific work, including the closing plenary talk at the 2002 Quark Matter Conference and the plenary talk dedicated to Heavy Ion Physics at the 25th International Nuclear Physics Conference in June 2013, and chaired sessions in numerous international conferences. In May 2015, he delivered a talk about the work done at at the first Italian Conference of Physics Students.
Giubellino has played a significant role in developing collaboration between Europe and Latin American institutes. His support led to Mexico’s involvement in ALICE, particularly in the successful construction of the V0 detector and the Cosmic Ray detector. As a recognition of these efforts he has been the first European to be awarded the medal of the Mexican Physical Society.
Giubellino has also taught short courses at various international schools, among which the instrumentation schools of the ICFA and the International school "Enrico Fermi" and for PhD and Master students at Torino University.

Awards