Tiziana Spina

Ph.D. in Applied Physics at UniGe/CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and today Associate Scientist at Fermilab and Peoples Fellow since October 2018. I got my master’s degree in Solid State Physics in 2011 with a final dissertation on AC losses in multifilamentary wires for Cable-In-Conduit-Conductor (CICC) for ITER magnets. In 2015 I got my Ph.D. in Physics at CERN and in association with the University of Geneva. Under the supervision of Prof. Rene’ Flukiger I performed many studies to understand the defect pinning landscape in commercial Nb3Sn wires. My study was mainly devoted to estimate the radiation damage induce by high energy protons irradiations on Nb3Sn wires and bulk sample sintering by HIP in view of HL-LHC upgrade. I adopted flux pinning force analysis to understand the increase of Jc after charged particle irradiations and then comparing the effects with neutron. I have very good ability to perform high quality X-ray diffraction, microscopy (SEM/EDX) and low temperature characterization by magnetization and transport measurements. My novel approach brought to the establishment of a universal correlation between the Tc and S variation (physical quantity) after different irradiation types (proton, neutron and heavy ions) and displacement per atom (dpa, statistical quantity of disorder estimated by Monte Carlo simulation). After my Ph.D. I got a 3-years term position at CERN as Senior Fellow and during these years I developed and optimized thermo-fluid dynamic FEM simulation for High Temperature Superconductor current leads to feed ITER and HL-LHC magnets.

Nowadays I'm working in the SRF/APS-TD and I'm devoting my efforts for improving SRF cavity performance by electron irradiation treatments with the aim of reducing the deleterious effects of niobium hydrides formation during cool-down (high field Q slope). In addition, I'm Fermilab co-PI in the study of Helium gas production in Beryllium after high energy irradiation in view of the development of high-power target for the Long-Baseline-Neutrino Facility (LBNF). Last but not least, I won a 3 years LDRD (Lab Directed R&D) grant to improve Iron-based superconductors performance by applying charge particles irradiations (protons and ions) in view of high field magnets applications as fusion reactors and future accelerators.