MartÍnez PÉrez, Mario

Biography

Born in Madrid, 1971, he studied Theoretical Physics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He spent many years in the DESY Laboratory in Hamburg (Germany) studying deeply inelastic electron-proton scattering processes in the ZEUS experiment, where he obtained his PhD and then worked as DESY researcher. In 2001, he moved to USA to work in Fermilab. He participated in the CDF experiment at the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider, with emphasis on searches for new physics. In 2007 he moved back to Europe and started working also in the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, that initiated operations in 2009. Since then he is acting as project leader of the IFAE-Barcelona group in CDF and ATLAS experiments. In 2015 he was appointed Head of IFAE Experimental Division, Scientific Manager of the Spanish High Energy Physics Program, and Scientific Delegate in CERN's Council.

Research Interest

He focused on QCD studies and searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model (Higgs boson, supersymmetry, dark matter, extra-dimensions, WIMPs, etc) at particle physics collider experiments in Europe and USA. This translates into hundreds of publications, tens of conference talks, and ten PhD theses that he supervised to date. Since 2009, he mostly focused on the LHC physics program at CERN. The Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful collider in the world. In 2012 the LHC experiments (ATLAS and CMS) discovered the Higgs boson. The LHC resumed operations in 2015 with a center-of-mass energy increased from 7-8 TeV to 13 TeV, and the promise to open a new era in fundamental physics. Since 2009, he lead a group of almost 30 scientists from IFAE-Barcelona that analyzes the data from the ATLAS experiment. Since 2015 I took new responsibilities as Head of IFAE Experimental Division, and Scientific Manager of the Spanish High Energy Physics Program.