University of Campinas, Brazil
I work in close contact with my wife. We both worked at Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, near where I was born. Then there was an opportunity to work in Brazil, my wife’s home country. So we left Italy in 2015 for Brazil. Soon after, we had this idea for a type of sensor for DUNE. The idea was born while we were on a 40-minute drive to pick up our son from kindergarten. It was for a type of photon detector, which we called ARAPUCA, and we’ve had so much success with it. So we went from a situation — moving from Italy to Brazil — where we didn’t know what to do to an idea that’s had great success. We’ve also joined and helped build the Latin American DUNE community. It’s beneficial from a scientific point of view and for the students. It’s fun to think that everything started from that moment during that long drive.