Mario PhD defence

Mario successfully held his Public Defense at the Paul Scherrer Institut on September 30, 2022. He graduated (from EPFL) with his work entitled: “Towards implementing new isotopes for environmental research: Redetermination of the Si-32 half-life”. Before, on July 13, 2022, Mario held his Private Defense and received outstanding positive feedback from his examination committee for his presentation and the scientific discussion: Congratulations!

The highlight of this work concerns the development of a novel radiochemical separation procedure to separate radiosilicon (Si-32) from proton-irradiated vanadium discs that allowed to provide ultra-pure Si-32 samples. Consequently, with a unique worldwide amount of Si-32 (around 20 MBq), a long-lasting scientific issue can be solved: the redetermination of the half-life. With a precisely determined half-life, Si-32 will gain attention in the future, as it is considered a new isotope for radiometric dating (100 to 1000 years). For more details, we are happy to share the link to EPFL’s library, where a more detailed abstract of the work and the thesis itself are available.