Francesco Piscitelli

Dr. Francesco Piscitelli is an expert in thermal neutron detectors at the Detector Group of the European Spallation Source. He has specialised in alternative technologies to face the He-3 shortage.

Between 2011 and 2014, he was based at ILL where he carried out his PhD in Physics from the University of Perugia (Italy). Previously, he had carried out his Master degree in Physics at ILL with the Università di Roma Tor Vergata. During his master thesis he worked on a Camera Anger type neutron detector for high spatial resolution applications also at ILL. 

- I work with detectors for reflectometers and the challenge of making a new technology that can cope with the high neutron rate of ESS. Before I started working at ESS, I worked at a similar technology, which was interesting for ESS. Then I was hired by ESS and now I continue to work on detector technology in BrightnESS.  

My daily work includes a lot of thinking, buying, assembling, correcting, analysing and so on. I work both at my office and at the lab, with assembly of the detector components with our partners at Lund University. We also do preliminary tests at LU, as we are developing a full system, where we put the different parts together.

Soon, we are going to the Budapest Neutron Centre again to do tests on their beamline. Here, we will put the detector in a real environment, as we do not have all the features in Lund – we need at real neutron source to get the optimal test facilities. We are also going to ISIS in October to test.  

What I like about BrightnESS is that we have ‘100 days of pain, then one day of glory’. This happens when all the pieces work together and you can see the real detector that does what it is supposed to do, when we are at the beamline. 

The most crucial challenge in BrightnESS is to be ready on time. If we had unlimited time, we could reach everything. With the timeframe, we need to balance perfection with time – at some point we need to stop our work although we have many ideas on how to do things better.

I think that BrightnESS contributes greatly to neutron research, as it enables continued research to create the best performance of the instruments