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Dr. Caio Licciardi

Research Scientist

Caio completed his PhD in experimental nuclear physics at the University of Regina in 2012. His thesis involved studies of neutrino-nucleus interactions as part of the Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) collaboration. In 2016, the entire T2K collaboration was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the first-ever observation of electron neutrinos from a muon neutrino beam. Following his PhD, Caio moved to Carleton University for a post doc working with the EXO collaboration. He was the leader of the calibration and fitting groups for EXO and was later asked to be the junior analysis coordinator.

Today Caio is the senior analysis coordinator for EXO-200 data, the predecessor to nEXO. He is also heavily involved in studying the physics potentials of the nEXO detector. In addition to his continued work on the nEXO collaboration, Caio is the local coordinator and data analysis leader for the Xe-still project at SNOLAB. The Xe-still is measuring vapour pressures for different isotopes of noble gases to explore new enrichment techniques for xenon.

How would you describe your work in simple terms?

“My work investigates some of the major outstanding questions about the inner workings of the universe. It also involves the development of cutting-edge technologies to do research in physics. At the moment, I am focused on deepening the human knowledge of the fundamental particles by studying the properties of the neutrino, and by searching for dark matter, a mysterious particle.”

Why did you choose physics?

“I am primarily motivated by my curiosity of how the universe works – physics allows me to explore that.”

What is something that might surprise people you work with?

“I am fascinated by prime numbers and love the Riemann zeta function. My hobby is to play with prime number problems in my spare time.”