Massimo Cerdonio

Massimo Cerdonio Born 09/08/1941; married 1966 with Annamaria, two daughters Simonetta and Giuliana; two grandson from Simonetta, Simone and Mattia. Laurea in Physics July 1964, University of Rome. Assistant Professor with tenure in Experimental Physics 1970 University of Rome. Associate Professor 1976 and then Full Professor 1980 in Experimental Physics at University of Trento and thereafter 1994 University of Padova. Since 1963 his research activity is devoted to experiments on physics of superconductors, superfluids, ferromagnets and ultra-low temperatures technologies, especially in respect to advanced instrumentation such as SQUID, superconducting magnetometers, gyroscopes based on gyromagnetic effect and, with E.Amaldi (1970-1976), to transducers for gravitational wave detectors. In 1990 he begins the project AURIGA for the realization of a resonant bar ultracryogenic gravitational waves detector, of which he is the Spokesperson from the start. AURIGA started to take data in may 1997 and in July 1999 showed a world record sensitivity. He was then very active in setting up a collaboration (International Gravitational Event Collaboration) for the search of burst events in coincidence with all the cryogenic resonant detectors in operation in Italy, United States and Australia, as the first gw detectors network worldwide. The results of the 1997-2000 IGEC observations set relevant upper limits on the emission of burst waves in the Galaxy. With the AURIGA team further improved transducers, obtaining an upgrade by a factor 10 of the energy sensitivity and by a factor 100 of the bandwidth of the detector AURIGA, which are by May 2005 respectively 500 quanta of vibration of the 2.3 tons bar and 100 Hz. A second run of IGEC was then performed in 2005-2007, giving further improved upper limits and showing false alarm rates less than 1/cy. At Trento he chaired the Department of Physics and directed a local CNR Center. From May 1994 to April 2000 he was a Member of the Executive Committee of INFN and, after approval of the VIRGO project, of the VIRGO Council. He is member from its start up of the Gravitational Wave International Committee (GWIC) formed in 1997 by the gravitational wave detector spokespersons and that represents the gravitational wave detection international community; he chaired GWIC from July 2003 to July 2007. He was member of the LISA International Science Team (LIST) as long as it existed. He has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in march 2008. He is a member of the GRG Committee of the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation (GRG). He retired from the University of Padova as Oct 1st 2010 and is currently a Senior Associate of INFN, Padova Section. In this capacity he continues in the role of Spokesperson of AURIGA, which the INFN keeps on the air together with the other INFN cryogenic bar gw detector NAUTILUS in the AUNA collaboration, to guarantee an “astrowatch” until Advanced LIGO/Virgo will come to operation. Currently he teaches a course on "Experimental Gravitation" within the PhD program of the University of Trento.