"Carolina Felgueiras and Margarida Paulino, students from LIP's Nuclear Reactions, Instrumentation and Astrophysics Group (NUC-RIA), were recently awarded a grant from the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Scholarship Programme."
Carolina Felgueiras and Margarida Paulino, final year students on the Master's Degree in Engineering Physics and members of LIP's Nuclear Reactions, Instrumentation and Astrophysics Group (NUC-RIA), were recently awarded a grant from the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship Programme (MSCFP), an initiative of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) designed to promote the participation of women in nuclear science and technology at a global level.
Carolina's project centres on studying the performance of RPC detectors designed for the detection of thermal neutrons, known as nRPCs. These detectors have relevant applications in various areas of nuclear physics, including reactor monitoring and particle physics experiments. To advance her research, Carolina travelled to the National Accelerator Centre (CNA) in Seville, where the detectors were subjected to tests with neutrons of different kinetic energies, ranging from epithermal to fast neutrons. The results obtained will be compared with Monte Carlo simulations using the GEANT4 transport libraries, making it possible to validate and optimise the performance of these detectors for future applications.
Margarida's project focuses on calculating the effective cross-sections of the nuclear reaction 118Sn(p,γ)119Sb at low energies and calibrating the C2TN's 3MV tandem accelerator. These measurements are essential to better understand the processes of stellar nucleosynthesis, in particular the p-process, one of the mechanisms responsible for the production of heavy elements in the universe. Her work is being carried out at the Centre for Nuclear Science and Technology (C2TN), where she is contributing to the advancement of knowledge about nuclear reactions of astrophysical interest.
The IAEA's Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship Programme (MSCFP) has played a key role in supporting the academic training of women in scientific and technological areas linked to nuclear physics, with the aim of reducing gender inequality and encouraging the presence of women in this area of physics.
The scholarship awarded to Carolina and Margarida under the MSCFP will last one year and will enable them to further their research and strengthen their training in nuclear physics.
Congratulations, Carolina and Margarida, for your excellent work and for winning this important distinction!