We started studying hadronic production of muon pairs with a beam dump setup and many important results were produced:
Together with C.Story of Oxford, I designed the Fastbus readout system in 1986/87, using SASD techniques. I participated as well in the definition of many parts of the online system (trigger decision and control units, slow control strategy, online software, ...).
In 1988 I implemented the CP software and supervised the DAS commissioning in 1989. I took over the LES software responsibility from R.Lucock in 1990 and part of the VAX-VMS software after Michel Jonker's departure in 1992.
Since 1992 I have been Project Leader for DAS software. I have been member of the DELPHI executive committee (DEC) from May 1996 to May 1998. I was since the beginning of 1997 Project Leader for the both DAS hardware and software. Since 1998, I am a member of the DELPHI coordination. Since January 1999, I am Group Leader of the EP/DEL group and responsible of the DELPHI CERN Team.
In Spring 2000, I launched with my TPC colleagues a task force for understanding
the origin of the TPC distortions. The new method for computing these distortions
has been implemented by E.Piotto. As from the end of LEP data taking, I defined
a procedure for measuring the TPC drift velocity as a function of time with
a relative precision of the order of 10-4. Details on this procedure
and results can be found here.
I have been following the progress of the Data Acquisition (DAQ) and Experiment Control System (ECS) design and gave advice for the writing of the Online TDR.
As from autumn 2001, I had the responsibility of Physics Software Coordinator
in LHCb. It consisted in linking software activities (mainly offline) with physics
(analysis, high level triggers, simulation etc...). I participate in most offline
computing meetings, dealing with the main software projects related with physics:
simulation (Gauss),
reconstruction (Brunel),
physics analysis (DaVinci)
and the LHCb framework Gaudi
. In 2002, these packages made their transition from fortran based algorithms
to C++, and the computing group was setting up the LHCb
Event Model . One of my tasks was to make sure that the actual implementation
by subdetector groups of this event model is suitable, and that the guidelines
are also suitable for being used by the subdetctor groups. Based on this generic
event model, an LHCb
Physics Event Model was developped to be used in DaVinci.
I have also been involved from the beginning in the LHCb Distributed Computing activities, using the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid as LHCb representative to various management bodies. I was in 2005 one of the main authors of the LHCb Computing Technical Design Report.
From 2007 to 2010, I have been the LHCb Computing Project Leader,
and then the deputy project leader for 2 years. I am now the LHCb
Distributed Computing Coordinator and I am still representing the LHCb
collaboration is the WLCG management bodies.
The LHCb Distributed Computing is based on a Grid Interware called DIRACthat
is the core part of the LHCb Grid Solution LHCbDirac, of which I
am also one of the developers. I am leading the Data Management
developments in LHCbDirac and Dirac, and in charge of the data
management operational aspects. I am assisting the Computing Project
Leader in the coordination of computing resources.