Rita Antonietti

Research

Biography:

Rita Antonietti obtained her Ph.D. in Physics from Roma Tre University, Italy, in March 2025, with a thesis on the response of a large-volume TPC prototype for the CYGNO experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS). Her research focuses on experimental particle physics and dark matter searches.

Before starting her Ph.D., she was awarded two research grants at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (2021), where she worked on the characterization and long-term stability of the CYGNO LIME prototype during its commissioning phase.

During her doctoral studies, she continued her work within the CYGNO collaboration, contributing to the commissioning and operation of LIME at LNGS. Her activities included the development of gas and slow control systems, detector calibration, and data acquisition. She also developed the analysis framework to evaluate the detector sensitivity to nuclear recoils, the expected signal from Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), leading candidates for dark matter.

Previously, during her Master’s studies at La Sapienza University of Rome, she joined the MEG II experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland. She first participated as a summer student, working on preparatory activities for the detector systems, and later carried out her Master’s thesis research within the collaboration. Her work focused on the gas gain behavior in the Cylindrical Drift Chamber and the optimization of front-end electronics for positron tracking in searches for the rare muon decay μ → eγ.

Since July 2025, she has been a postdoctoral researcher (adiunkt) at AstroCeNT of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw.

Degrees and titles