LIV.DAT student Julia Tena Vidal passes PhD viva
LIV.DAT student Julia Tena Vidal has successfully defended her PhD thesis and passed her PhD viva to become Dr Julia Tena Vidal!
Julia started her PhD studies at the University of Liverpool as part of the first LIV.DAT cohort of students in 2017. Her thesis focuses on the development of GENIE global analysis of neutrino scattering data, the tuning of simulations and the data-driven characterization of simulation uncertainties.
Prof Costas Andreopoulos (Julia’s PhD supervisor, left) Dr Julia Tena Vidal (centre) and Dr Marco Roda (Julia’s post-doctoral colleague, right)
The GENIE neutrino Monte Carlo event generator seeks to model neutrino interactions for all probes and targets across the entire kinematic phase space relevant for neutrino experiments. The lack of a complete theory to model all neutrino scattering processes forces neutrino event generators to rely on empirical models to simulate exclusive final states for neutrino scattering off nucleon and nuclei. These models need to be tuned to data in order to provide a better description and uncertainties for systematic analyses.
Julia's PhD project has resulted in three journal papers, two of them already published in Phy.Rev.D, and a third one in preparation. In addition to her main PhD work, she also collaborated with other neutrino Monte Carlo experts from the field to study the different implementations of final state interaction models in neutrino event generators.
Besides the excellent experience in the academic field, Julia is extremely grateful for the friends she made here in Liverpool. She said “The LIV.DAT cohort was an excellent way to unify a group of people who just started a PhD, with the training provided and the shared training and conferences”.
Julia has now started a post doc position at Tel Aviv University, where she continues her work in the neutrino field whilst working for the e4v and DUNE Collaborations.
Julia’s published Phys.Rev papers:
Neutrino-nucleon cross-section model tuning in GENIE v3
Hadronization model tuning in genie v3
Congratulations Julia!