Seminar: María Rodríguez

On Friday, July 13, María Rodríguez, research member of the PRIMA group of the INTE, will present the most recent advances in her doctorate during the seminar: "Preliminary design of a simplified Compton camera for environmental applications".

Recent events, such as the accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, have revealed the need to measure risk areas with remote sensors. A Compton camera can determine the position and activities of radioactive sources in the environment by generating images.

Compton cameras are usually built with a set of small detectors, making them highly-expensive and highly-complex. A simpler and cheaper alternative may be a chamber formed by several scintillation bars made of CsI (Tl) with silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) coupled to both ends of the crystal.

Carried out under the supervision of Arturo Vargas, the aims of Maria's thesis are the design and optimisation of said camera, a work carried out using PENELOPE/penEasy simulations.

María Rodríguez

María has a degree in physics from the University of Santiago de Compostela. Later, she completed an Interuniversity Master's Degree in Nuclear Physics at the University of Barcelona, doing her Master's thesis at the INTE.

In 2017 she began her doctorate studies, also at the Institute, joining the PRIMA group.