Welcome to This New Beginning

[EDIT: if you want to know what I am up to in a given moment, you can find updated biographical information in the About page. This post will NOT be updated with new affiliations and ventures.]

My name is Pietro, and I have a PhD in physics, but my current main research interest is statistics, with a focus on statistical learning techniques.

In my daily job, I am a researcher in Universidad de Oviedo, Spain, where I work as a particle physicist within the CMS experiment, and am the delegated node PI for the AdvancedMVA4NewPhysics ITN network (you can find me blogging there as well, by the way). I am active in Standard Model (ttH search, WZ cross section, ttbar cross section) and BSM physics (2HDM in the Higgs sector, and SUSY in top sector).

Drawing from my experiences in CMS data analysis, however, I grew fond of statistical techniques, both on the matter of their foundations and on the field of statistical learning. As a consequence, my research focus began to shift from the same usual physics to these more interesting, fundamental, methodological topics. I joined the CMS Statistics Committee, where I found a rich landscape of interesting use cases and a fertile field for discussion. However, there is a specific area of statistics that is rarely applied or discussed in HEP: Bayesian statistics. I felt this is really a pity, so I started roaming extensively this exciting area.

I hope to be able, in this blog, to spark in you some interest for statistical learning and for Bayesian statistics, or at least to give you a good time in reading my random thoughts about these topics.

If you are reading this post, you can safely skip reading the About page, which contains mostly a cut-and-paste of this post, unless you want to find a list of my publications, which is actually present in that page.

Oh, and the look-n-feel of the blog might change a bit in the next days: I am not entirely satisfied with the tinkering I have done so far, so I will most likely tinker with fonts and colours some more.

To conclude, and without further ado, welcome to my new small project: I hope you will enjoy it 🙂