Ana Amélia Bergamini Machado is a professor at the Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics at UNICAMP. She works in the field of particle physics, specifically in scientific instrumentation for particle detector construction. Her academic background is broad, including knowledge in astronomy, field theory, experimental hadronic physics in fixed-target experiments, as well as experimental neutrino physics and dark matter. She earned her PhD at the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF) and has worked at renowned international research institutions, such as the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy and the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany.
Her research contributions are notable in the development of advanced photon detection systems for neutrino physics, with a focus on liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) detectors, as well as detectors using liquid scintillators and solid-state detectors.
Together with her collaborator Ettore Segreto, she co-invented the “Arapuca” device, a photon detector used in large-scale experiments like DUNE. This innovation was recognized with the prestigious Early Career Instrumentation Award by the American Physical Society in 2019.
She is currently involved in neutrino oscillation experiments, both long and short-range: DUNE and SBND at Fermilab, and protoDUNE at CERN. She is also part of the PULArC project, aimed at purifying liquid argon, and the C-ARAPUCA project, which intends to use the ARAPUCA technology to detect Cherenkov photons produced by cosmic ray interactions in water tank.