Santo Gammino

Santo Gammino is Director of Research at the Laboratori Nazionali del Sud of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN-LNS). Starting from a M.Sc. in Nuclear Physics, he has been working since 1988 in the field of Accelerator development, with a focus to the production of ion beams. His research team has been involved in many European collaboration projects, including different UE project within 5th, 6th and 7th Framework Programme.

- At the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), we have been working with high current low energy beams since 1996. In 2010, we joined the ESS project. My job is to maximize the output of the In-Kind collaboration between ESS and three Italian facilities involved in the ESS construction: INFN, Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste and Consiglio nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). INFN serves as the In-Kind representative for all three organisations with respect to the Ministry of Education, University and Research. I am a member of the BrightnESS General Assembly and nationally I work with preparation of technical agreements and participate in meetings with the personnel at ESS, among other things.

The ESS is a complex project. In the beginning, I worked mostly with the technical and scientific areas of the In-Kind process. Now, I also work a lot with the management aspects. In that sense, BrightnESS Work Package 2 is important, because the people involved bring supplementing points of view to those of the scientists and technical staff at ESS. I already see some improvements based on the work we have done so far.           

My personal goal in BrightnESS is to secure the best amount of knowhow, by encouraging maximum knowledge exchange between INFN and the other project partners, and the ESS.  BrightnESS includes these aspects and therefore the project will improve the quality of the actions devoted to building this large research infrastructure, taking profit of the lesson learnt and providing self-correction. When the project is finished, the people in Lund will be able to continue their work, knowing that the knowledge and knowhow have been secured. We have been focusing on this goal since the kickoff meeting last year.