VALERIO DAO
Assistant Professor
Physics and Astronomy
valerio.dao@stonybrook.edu | (631)-632-8087, Physics D-106
Curriculum Vitae. (Last updated: 2024 Mar)

Biography
Valerio Dao is an Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University since 2024. He was a research fellow and research scientist at CERN, Switzerland (2017-2023), a Postdoctoral Researcher at Stony Brook University (2016-2017) and a Postdoctoral researcher at The University of Freiburg, officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany (2014-2016). He received his PhD in 2014 at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Research Statement
My research interests focus on experimental studies of the Higgs boson particle, the last discovered piece of our best model to describe reality (The Standard Model). The data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator are used to measure the production rate of the particle and look for anomalous results that could indicate the presence of new physics. I specialised in the decay of the Higgs boson into two b-quarks (H➞bb), the most popular decay mode that I helped discover in 2018. By developing advanced techniques in particle reconstruction and identification as well as data analysis, both heavily relying on machine learning methods, I aim to probe extremely rare Higgs boson production processes, like the simultaneous production of two Higgs particles, which can revolutionise our understanding of how the universe works at the infinitesimal scale.In addition, I am heavily involved in the development of silicon pixel detectors; from the preparation of the upgrade of the ATLAS detector for the high luminosity phase of the LHC, to the prototype building for monolithic detectors based on commercial CMOS imaging processing.