The Belle II detector is a particle physics experiment designed to study the properties of the so-called B meson, a heavy particle made up of b-type quarks, or beauty quarks. It is part of the Japanese KEK accelerator complex in Tsukuba, Japan, and operates in association with the SuperKEKB particle accelerator, which currently holds the world record for instantaneous luminosity.
Mariñas’ appointment follows his successful work as technical coordinator during the ’Long Shutdown 1,’ a period of detector upgrades that concluded earlier this year with high data-taking efficiency. With this new position, which marks a significant advance in his career in the field of instrumentation, the scientist will lead the design, construction and implementation of the improvements in the different subdetectors of the experiment and in the data acquisition system, in preparation for the high-luminosity operation planned for the early 2030s. Mariñas will continue with the preparation of the detector to improve its performance and efficiency in high-luminosity operations, which are crucial for the detailed study of rare processes and for future discoveries in particle physics. "We are designing the detector of the future", said the CSIC researcher at the Institute of Corpuscular Physics, a joint centre of the University of Valencia and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
The Belle II is a collaboration involving 1,174 researchers from 124 international institutes. The IFIC has been a member of this experiment for more than a decade and has contributed to the development, construction and commissioning of the pixel detector.
Scientific Career
Mariñas graduated from the University of Santiago de Compostela and earned his PhD in Physics from the University of Valencia. He spent nearly a decade at the Silicon Laboratory of the University of Bonn , where he led the Belle II pixel instrumentation group, was deputy coordinator for the experiment’s data acquisition and spent long periods in Japan.In 2019, he returned to the IFIC with a GenT distinguished researcher contract and is currently a senior scientist at the CSIC in its research centre located in the Scientific Park of the University of Valencia.
