Gerard Ariño
Gerard Ariño Estrada is a researcher at the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE–BIST) in Barcelona, working at the intersection of radiation physics, detector development, and medical imaging. His background spans radiation physics, modeling, and the development of novel approaches for the detection of x‑rays, gamma photons, and visible light, with applications in nuclear medicine and dosimetry.
He has conducted extensive research in advanced detector technologies, contributing to projects funded primarily by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. His work includes innovations in gamma detection, Cherenkov-based detectors, and high‑performance imaging systems for proton therapy and positron emission.
In 2024, he was awarded funding under the highly competitive ATRAE call from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities to lead the VERSATILE project, aimed at developing a next‑generation gamma detector for targeted alpha therapy dosimetry, boron neutron capture therapy, and high‑resolution time‑of‑flight PET imaging.
Rafael Ballabriga
Rafael Ballabriga is a graduate of Ramon Llull University in Barcelona (BSc 2000, MSc 2002). In 2004, he joined CERN microelectronics group, Geneva (Switzerland), in the framework of the CERN Doctoral Student Program to work in the design and characterization of hybrid pixel detectors.
Rafael Ballabriga received the IEEE NPSS Best Student Paper Award in 2006. He defended his PhD thesis entitled “The Design and Implementation in 0.13um CMOS of an Algorithm Permitting Spectroscopic Imaging with High Spatial Resolution for Hybrid Pixel Detectors” in 2009 for which he received the best thesis award of the Ramon Llull university doctoral programme 2009-2010. In 2013 he received the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society Radiation Instrumentation Early Career Award.
Rafael Ballabriga has coached younger designers in the design of front-ends in CMOS technologies. Holds three patents and has authored or co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed journal publications.
Marco Carminati
Marco Carminati received his BSc and MSc degrees in Electronic Engineering, both magna cum laude, from the Politecnico di Milano in 2003 and 2005. In 2006 he joined the Department of Electronics and Information at Politecnico di Milano, working on compact attitude‑estimation units based on MEMS inertial sensors and Kalman filtering.
In 2007 he ranked first in a national competition for a doctoral fellowship and completed his PhD in 2009 with a thesis on low‑noise analog design and bio‑electronic instrumentation. During his doctoral studies, he was awarded a Progetto Roberto Rocca Fellowship and spent a research period at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working on BioMEMS and microfluidics.
Since 2016 he has been a tenure‑track Assistant Professor of Electronics at Politecnico di Milano and is associated with INFN Milano. His research focuses on sensors, microfabrication, radiation detectors, and low‑noise analog instrumentation. He has authored more than 50 journal papers, over 100 conference contributions, several book chapters, and holds multiple patents.
Edoardo Charbon
Edoardo Charbon (SM’00 F’17) received the Diploma from ETH Zurich, the M.S. from the University of California at San Diego, and the Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, 1991, and 1995, respectively, all in electrical engineering and EECS.
He has consulted with numerous organizations, including Bosch, X-Fab, Texas Instruments, Maxim, Sony, Agilent, and the Carlyle Group. He was with Cadence Design Systems from 1995 to 2000, where he was the Architect of the company's initiative on information hiding for intellectual property protection. In 2000, he joined Canesta Inc., as the Chief Architect, where he led the development of wireless 3-D CMOS image sensors. Since 2002 he has been a member of the faculty of EPFL, where is a full professor. From 2008 to 2016 he was with Delft University of Technology’s as Chair of VLSI design. Dr. Charbon has been the driving force behind the creation of deep-submicron CMOS SPAD technology, which is mass-produced since 2015 and is present in telemeters, proximity sensors, and medical diagnostics tools. His interests span from 3-D vision, LiDAR, FLIM, FCS, NIROT to super-resolution microscopy, time-resolved Raman spectroscopy, and cryo-CMOS circuits and systems for quantum computing.
He has authored or co-authored over 400 papers and two books, and he holds 24 patents. Dr. Charbon is a distinguished visiting scholar of the W. M. Keck Institute for Space at Caltech, a fellow of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Photonics Society, and a fellow of the IEEE.
Perceval Coudrain
Perceval Coudrain received a M.S. degree in Materials Sciences from the University of Nantes, France, in 2001 and a PhD degree from Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, France, in 2009. He joined STMicroelectronics in 2002 and entered the advanced R&D group in 2005 where he was involved in the early development of backside illumination and monolithic 3D integration for CMOS image sensors. For fifteen years he has been focusing on 3D integration technologies including TSV and Cu-Cu hybrid bonding development, and thermal management. He moved to CEA-Leti in 2020 where his research focuses on 3D integration, Fan-Out Wafer Level Packaging and embedded thermal dissipation solutions.
David Gascón
David Gascon received a BSc degree in electronics engineering from University Ramon Llull, Spain, in 1998, and a PhD degree in electronics from University of Barcelona, Spain in 2008.
Currently he is working in the instrumentation group of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), Spain. He is also the Technical Coordinator of the ICCUB.
His research activity is in the area of mixed signals circuits for high energy physics, astrophysics experiments and medical imaging. Particularly, he is interested in ASIC design for fast photodetector readout and front-end electronics. He has authored or co-authored more than 60 papers related to these subjects.
Alberto Gola
Alberto Gola is a senior researcher at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) in Trento, working in the Microsystems Technology group on the development of silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) and advanced solid‑state photodetectors. He has played a central role in the design and optimization of FBK’s SiPM technologies for applications in high‑energy physics, medical imaging, and photon‑counting instrumentation.
He earned his PhD in Information and Communication Technologies from the University of Trento, focusing on the characterization and modeling of SiPM devices. His work includes contributions to detector systems for experiments such as DarkSide and nEXO, and he has co‑authored numerous publications on SiPM design, performance, and applications.
Sergio Gómez
Sergio Gómez González is a professor in the Department of Graphic Engineering and Design at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). He teaches and conducts research in mechanical design, manufacturing technologies, and engineering graphics, and is affiliated with the InSUP research group, working on additive manufacturing and bioengineering applications.
He earned his PhD in Industrial Engineering at UPC, focusing on advanced design and fabrication methods. His academic activity includes authorship of books and research contributions in CAD/CAM, design for manufacturability, and applied engineering graphics.
Carlos Granja
Carlos Granja is a nuclear physicist and senior researcher at Advacam in Prague, specializing in radiation detection, space‑radiation monitoring, and Timepix/Timepix3 detector technologies. He has led ESA‑funded projects developing miniaturized radiation‑monitoring platforms for satellites and CubeSats, including wide–field‑of‑view X‑ray and charged‑particle detectors.
He has contributed extensively to Medipix/Timepix‑based instrumentation for space, medical, and industrial applications. His scientific output includes more than 60 peer‑reviewed publications and an h‑index of 24.
Daniel Hynds
Daniel Hynds is a Silicon detector Development Scientist at the Department of Physics of the University of Oxford. His research interests include areas such as the development of semiconductor tracking detectors, and the construction of large-scale vertexing and tracking detectors for particle physics experiments. Oxford has large commitments on the ATLAS experiment at CERN, where they are constructing both the modules and half-rings that form one of the pixel detector end-caps.
On the R&D side, his interests include:
- novel silicon detector development, such as Low Gain Avalanche Devices (LGADs) and monolithic CMOS detectors
- non-silicon material exploitation, such as InP
- simulations; in particular the allpix squared detector simulation package
UK-wide, he established and chair the steering committee for the UK advanced instrumentation lecture series: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1129266
Boris Korzh
Boris Korzh received his MSc in Physics from Imperial College London in 2012 and his PhD in Physics from the University of Geneva in 2016, specializing in semiconductor‑ and superconductor‑based single‑photon detectors. He subsequently worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and held visiting positions at NIST and Caltech. In 2024 he joined the University of Geneva as an Assistant Professor of Physics, focusing on high‑performance superconducting nanowire detectors and quantum communication technologies.
Carla Marín
Carla Marín Benito earned her PhD in Physics from the University of Barcelona in 2018 and continued with postdoctoral positions at the Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire (France) and at CERN. Since 2021 she has been a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB), working in experimental high‑energy physics with emphasis on flavour physics, rare decays, and tests of lepton. In 2022 she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant for her project on suppressed b → d ℓℓ decays.
Andrei Nomerotski
Andrei Nomerotski is a Senior Researcher at the Czech Technical University in Prague and a Professor at Florida International University. He previously held senior positions at Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the University of Oxford, contributing extensively to detector development for high‑energy physics and fast optical imaging. His recent work focuses on single‑photon–sensitive cameras and time‑stamping technologies for quantum imaging and astrophysics.
Angelo Rivetti
Angelo Rivetti is a Senior Engineer with INFN in Torino and professor of Applied Electronics and Microelectronics with the Department of Physics of the Torino University. A. Rivetti got his laurea in Physics from the University of Torino in March 1995 and the PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic School of the same town in February 2000. From 1998 to 2000 he was Doctoral fellow at CERN, where he pursued his research on radiation hard circuits in deep sub-micron CMOS technologies in the framework of the RD49 collaboration and of the ALICE experiment. After a period as research assistant with the University of Torino, he joined INFN as permanent staff in December 2001. His key area of expertise is in the design of mixed-signal integrated circuits for radiation detectors readout, with emphasis on the design of front-end amplifiers, analog-to-digital, time-to-digital converters and on system integration. From 2001 to 2007, A. Rivetti had leading roles in the design and characterization of the front-end electronics of the Silicon Drift Detectors of the ALICE experiment at CERN and in the development of CMAD, a front-end ASIC originally conceived for photomultiplier tubes and now used to read-out several in the COMPASS experiment at CERN. In the same years, he initiated also R&D programs on front-end electronics for hybrid pixel detectors for the experiment PANDA at GSI and NA62 at CERN. The latter development is at the root of a primary technology transfer program, of which A. Rivetti is presently in charge for INFN. From 2010 to 2012, A. Rivetti serves regularly as reviewer for the IEEE Transaction on Nuclear Science, Nuclear Instruments and Methods, the Journal of Instrumentation and the IEEE Transaction on Circuit and System.
Dennis Schaart
Dennis R. Schaart heads the Medical Physics & Technology section at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). He worked in academia as well as in the medical device industry, always at the intersection of physics, technology, and medicine. He started as an R&D physicist at Nucletron (now Elekta), where he developed new devices for radiotherapy. He obtained his doctoral degree (with highest honors) in 2002. He then joined TU Delft to set up a new research line on in-vivo molecular imaging technology, with special focus on ultrafast detectors for time-of-flight positron emission tomography (TOF-PET). His team was among the first to explore the use of silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) in TOF-PET and has published many works on the fundamentals of SiPM-based detectors and the theory of ultrafast timing. Dennis’ current research interests range from novel technologies for in vivo molecular imaging to image guidance in radiotherapy. He leads the Technology for Oncology programme of the TU Delft Health Initiative and serves as a member of the R&D Program Board of the Holland Particle Therapy Centre (HollandPTC). He has (co-)authored more than 150 peer-reviewed papers and is a frequently invited speaker.
Francesc Serra-Graells
Francesc Serra-Graells is an Analog and Mixed-Signal IC Design Research Manager at IMB-CNM (CSIC).
His research is focused on the design of low-power mixed-signal CMOS circuits for advanced sensing systems. The motivation of this research line is double. First, the lack of portable and miniaturized energy sources for ubiquitous integrated circuits means that very low-power design techniques are of high interest. Second, the global More than Moore trending reinforces CMOS technologies as the most economical option not only for the integration of electronic circuits but also for truly heterogeneous systems-on-chip (SoCs) with sensing capabilities. My works on low-power (low-voltage and/or low-current) CMOS circuit design have been extended to a wide variety of analog, mixed-signal and RF functional blocks, such as amplifiers with automatic gain control (AGC), analog-to-digital (ADC) and digital-to analog (DAC) data converters, voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs) in phase-locked loops (PLLs) and power management units (PMUs), among others. The results have been employed in the development of full-custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and IP library blocks in several CMOS technology nodes (2.5um, 1.2um, 0.8um, 0.35um, 0.18um, 65nm and 22nm) for very low-power smart sensing applications, like hearing aids, IR and X-ray image sensors, MEMS and chemical microsensors, implantable systems for neural recording, aerospace instrumentation and strategic equipment. I always try to maintain a good balance between the above research work and development activities in the form of contracts and patents for transferring technology to industrial partners. It is also worth to highlight the projection of my R&D experience towards IC reverse engineering and teaching innovation at university.
Walter Snoeys
Walter Snoeys is a Principal Electronics Engineer at CERN, where he has worked since 1994 on advanced sensor and pixel‑detector technologies for high‑energy physics experiments. He holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from KU Leuven and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. His contributions include pioneering work on CMOS monolithic active pixel sensors and leadership in detector R&D for experiments such as ALICE and LHCb engineering and teaching innovation at university.
Renato Turchetta
Renato Turchetta received the M.S. degree in Physics from the University of Milan (Italy) in 1988 and the Ph.D. from the University of Strasbourg (France) in 1991. In 1999 he joined the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK. In 2001 he founded a design group developing custom CMOS image sensors (CIS). With his team he developed the first CIS product for electron microscopy, a 16Mpixel, rad-hard sensor, as well as a global shutter, 5 million frames per second, megapixel CIS. In 2014 he co-founded Vivamos Ltd., a spin-off set up with the goal to commercialise his 6.7 Mpixel, wafer-scale, video rate CIS. He was executive director of the company until the end of 2016. In 2017 he co-founded IMASENIC, where he is the CEO. The company develops custom image sensors and readout integrated circuits (ROIC). It has been growing since its foundation and has become a reference player in its market.
Renato is also member of the Advisory Board of the Image Sensors Europe conference since 2011. He also authored or co-authored over 100 papers in peer-review journals and 10 patents.
