ABOUT

I am an experimental particle physicist working as a First Researcher for the Italian institute for nuclear physics (INFN), and a member of the CMS experiment at CERN since 2001, the SWGO experiment since 2022, the Muon Collider Collaboration since 2023, of the DRD6-Calo collaboration since 2024, and the TAMBO collaboration since 2025. Previously (1995-2012) I have been a member of the CDF experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. I am married since 2017 with Kalliopi Petrou, a lyrical soprano singer. We have two sons, Alessandro and Leonardo, born in December 2025. I also have a son (Filippo, borh 1999) and a daughter (Ilaria, born 2003) from a previous marriage. I live in Padova, where I work for the INFN; I am also a Guest Professor at Lulea University of Technology since 2024. My research interests are extended in three partly synergic directions: - in Particle Physics, where they span from Higgs boson physics to top quark physics, to searches for new phenomena extending our current knowledge of subnuclear world; - in Statistics, focusing on parameter estimation, frequentist methods, handling nuisance parameters in statistical inference, and multivariate analysis; - in Computer Science, targeting the AI-assisted end-to-end optimization of physics measurements with machine learning, and the development of neuromorphic computing solutions for the readout of particle detectors and related instrumentation. A list of over 2000 scientific publications I authored can be found here . A shorter (!) list of interesting papers in Machine Learning I have published in 2025 is instead in this pdf file.

HIGHLIGHTS

Leadership

• President of the USERN Organization, a network for interdisciplinary research and education with over 26,000 members, Nov 2022-present
• Scientific co-lead of the PHINDER project (a EIC-Pathfinder funded European project)
• DRD6-Calo board member and administrator for INFN-Padova (2024-present)
• Chair of Working Group 2 (Co-design) of EUCAIF collaboration (2024-present)
• Founder (2019) and coordinator (-2024) of the MODE Collaboration, a group of physicists and computer scientists from over 30 institutions across three continents, who share a cutting-edge research program at the crossroads of particle physics and artificial intelligence.
• Outreach coordinator and PI of INFN-Padova node of INSIGHTS ETN, 2017-2022
• Scientific coordinator of AMVA4NewPhysics ETN, funded by Horizon2020, 2014-2019
• Scientific coordinator of accelerator-based research at INFN-Padova and board member of CSN1 at INFN, 2016-2020
• Chair of CMS Statistics committee, 2012-2015
• Chair of over 30 review committees in CDF and CMS, 2002-present

Innovation

• Recipient of multiple EC grants (total grant amounts: 3.3M euro, PHINDER 2025; 2.4M euro, AMVA4NewPhysics 2015; 3.0M euro, INSIGHTS 2017)
• Author of innovative algorithms for data analysis (MuScleFit, Inverse Bagging, Hyperball, Hemisphere Mixing, RanBox, INFERNO, TomOpt)

Dissemination

• Author of over 2000 scientific publications (359k citations, Hirsch index 274 - Google scholar, or -restricting to HEP and related- 260k citations, H-index 222, InspireHEP)
• Invited lecturer at 21 post-graduate schools in Physics, Statistics, and Machine Learning
• Gave over 60 talks at international conferences, 43 seminars, and 4 colloquia at universities and research institutes
• Editor-in-chief of journal AI and Brain of Scilight Press, 2026-present
• Editor of journal Reviews in Physics of Elsevier Pub. co., 2015-2025
• Editor of journal Physics Open of Elsevier Pub. co., 2019-present
• Editor of journal of Elsevier Pub. co., 2025
• Author of over 1500 science popularization online articles in personal blog (over 15M visits)
• Author of book Anomaly! Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab (World Scientific 2016)

NEWS AND FUTURE EVENTS

News - 2026 only
In 2026 I have decreased my travel-involving activities because of the birth of twin babies.

• June 22: I lectured on AI for co-design of scientific experiments the students of the AIPHY school in Orsay, France
• June 17: I gave a seminar at the Network School in Forest City, Malaysia
• June 16: I gave a keynote talk at the AI4X conference in Singapore
• June 8: I served as opposer to the Ph.D. defense of Aurora Grefsrud in Bergen, Norway
• June 5: I joined the SCIANCE AISWG working group on Astronomy and Fundamental Physics
• April 10: I gave a Physics Colloquium at the MIT IAIFI institute, in Cambriged (Massachusetts, USA)
• April 9: I gave a seminar at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, California, USA

PARTICLE PHYSICS

For the CMS experiment (2001-present) I have focused my research activities on Higgs physics and on searches for new phenomena, as well as on the development of advanced analysis tools for the calibration of the muon momentum scale (MuScleFit), used in Higgs discovery analyses, the modeling of QCD backgrounds in multi-jet final states (Hemisphere mixing), the investigation of multi-dimensional parameter space of new physics theories with unsupervised tools, and the anomaly detection approach to searches of new phenomena (Inverse Bagging, RanBox).
Selected publications:

• CMS Collaboration, Search for Nonresonant Higgs boson pair production in the bbbb final state at sqrt(s)=13 TeV", J. HEP 04 (2019) 112.
• CMS Collaboration, Search for a pseudoscalar boson decaying into a Z boson and the 125 GeV Higgs boson in llbb final states, Phys. Lett. B748 (2015) 221.
• CMS Collaboration, Search for a Higgs boson decaying into a b-quark pair and produced in association with b quarks in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV, Phys. Lett. B722 (2013) 207.
• CMS Collaboration, Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, J. INST. 7 (2012) 10002.

Previously, for the CDF experiment (1995-2012) I have contributed to the top quark search and discovery and to the construction of the muon system upgrade of the CDF-II detector. I have produced the first observation of Z->bb decays in hadron collisions, and developed a trigger for the calibration of b-quark jets using Z->bb decays.
Selected publications:

• J. Donini et al., Energy Calibration of b-quark jets with Z->bb decays at the Tevatron collider, Nucl. Instr. Meth. Phys. Res. A596 (2008) 354.
• T. Dorigo, The Muon System Upgrade for the CDF II Experiment, Nucl. Instr. Meth. A461 (2001) 560.
• T. Dorigo, Observation of Z Decays to b-Quark Pairs at the Tevatron Collider, arXiv:hep-ex/9806022 (1998).
• F. Abe et al., First Observation of the All-Hadronic Decay of top-antitop Pairs, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79 (1997) 1992.

STATISTICS AND MACHINE LEARNING

Statistics
As a member (Sep 2009-present) and chair (Jan 2012-Jul 2015) of the CMS Statistics Committee I have been ensuring the highest standards of statistical inference in data analysis for the publications of my experiment, advising the collaboration on best practice and performing the screening of ALL journal publications from the point of view of statistics technique and description.
Through the design and implementation of the AMVA4NewPhysics ITN project (see below) I have brought Statisticians and Physicists together with the purpose of enabling a common language and addressing specific problems of HEP data analysis. I am fostering the interest of Statistics students in Padova toward HEP applications and studies, by offering theses and teaching particle physics at the Masters in Statistical Sciences.
Recent publications of relevance:

• L. Masserano et al., Simulation-Based Inference with WALDO: Perfectly Calibrated Confidence Regions Using Any Prediction or Posterior Estimation Algorithm, arXiv:2205.15680, June 2022.
• T. Dorigo et al., Deep Regression of Muon Energy with a K-Nearest Neighbor Algorithm, arXiv:2203.02841, March 2022.
• T. Dorigo et al., RanBox: Anomaly Detection in the Copula Space, arXiv:2106.05747[physics.data-an], June 2021.
• A. Stakia et al., Advanced Multi-Variate Analysis for New Physics Searches at the LHC, arXiv:2105.07530, May 2021.
• T. Dorigo, Extraordinary Claims: The 0.000029% Solution, EPJ Web Conf. 95 (2015) 02003.
• B. Scarpa and T. Dorigo, Bayesian Parametric Modeling of Higgs Pair Production, EPJ Web Conf. 137 (2017) 11011.
• A. Carvalho et al., Higgs Pair Production: Choosing Benchmarks with Cluster Analysis", arXiv:1507.02245, J. HEP 04 (2016) 126.

Machine Learning
I am involved in a number of studies of applications of machine learning techniques to particle physics applications, as well as in the design of new techniques customized to the very special use cases provided by HEP and related research. These activities are in part the result of collaboration with the darkmachines and the GradHep collaborations, to which I belong, as well as the ETN networks AMVA4NewPhysics and INSIGHTS (see below).
Recent publications of relevance (last updated 2025):

• T. Dorigo et al., Artificial Intelligence in Science and Society: the Vision of USERN, IEEE Access 13 (2025) 15993
• >M. Aehle et al., Progress in end-to-end optimization of fundamental physics experimental apparata with differentiable programming, Rev.Phys. 13 (2025) 100120
• >K. Schmidt et al., End-to-End Detector Optimization with Diffusion Models: A Case Study in Sampling Calorimeters, Particles 8 (2025) 2, 47
• A. de Vita et al., Hadron Identification Prospects with Granular Calorimeters, Particles 8 (2025) 2, 58
• E. Lupi et al., Neuromorphic Readout for Hadron Calorimeters, Particles 8 (2025) 2, 52
• E. Coradin et al., Unsupervised Particle Tracking with Neuromorphic Computing, Particles 8 (2025) 2, 40
• T. Dorigo et al., On the utility function of experiments in fundamental science, Phys. Open 23 (2025) 100270
• T. Dorigo et al., Toward the end-to-end optimization of the SWGO array layout, Nucl. Phys.B 1017 (2025) 116934
• G. Strong et al., TomOpt: Differential optimisation for task- and constraint-aware design of particle detectors in the context of muon tomography, Mach. Learn. Sci. Tech. 5 (2024) 3, 035002
• T. Dorigo et al., Toward the end-to-end optimization of particle physics instruments with differentiable programming
• J. Kieseler et al., Calorimetric Measurement of Multi-TeV Muons via Deep Regression, arXiv:2107.02119 (2021), EPJC 82 (2022), 82.
• P. Calafiura et al., Artificial intelligence for High-Energy Physics, World Scientific 2022,
• T. Dorigo, Geometry Optimization of a Muon-Electron Scattering Detector, arXiv:2002.09973, Physics Open 4 (2020) 100022.
• P. de Castro and T. Dorigo, INFERNO: Inference-Aware Neural Optimization, Comp. Phys. Comm. 244 (2019) 170.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

Current teaching activities

• Course on "Statistics for data analysis" at the Ph.D. in Physics, University of Padova (2014-present)

Previous teaching activities at undergraduate level:

• Course on "Particle Physics: Foundations, Tools, Methods" at the Masters in Statistical Sciences, as a hired professor at the University of Padova (2018-present)
• Course on "Subnuclear Gauge Physics" at the Masters in Physics, Univ. Padova 2009-2012
• Course on "Physics" for the Laurea in Chemistry, Univ. Padova 2002-2004
• Course on "Physics Experimentation 2" for the Laurea in Physics, Univ. Padova 2006-2008

Invited lectures at advanced graduate schools (last updated 2025):

• "Physics at hadron colliders" at: Univ. Catania 2004, Univ. Padova 2004, "Corfu Summer Institute", Corfu, Greece 2005
• "Physics with CMS" at "VIICRA school", Quito 2017
• "The discovery of the Higgs boson" at: "Shanghai Tech Summer School", Asiago 2018, Asiago, Italy 2019
• "Statistics for data analysis" at: "QGMM School" (COST action 18108, Corfu, Greece 2021), "Niccolo' Cabeo school", Ferrara, Italy 2014, "Open Science Data Cloud school", Perugia, Italy 2017, "CHIPP School" (Engelberg, 2012), "HEP Summer School" (Weihai, China 2016), "DKPI Indian Summer School" (Traunkirken, Austria 2015), "SOS School of Statistics" (Autrans 2016, La Londe 2018, France), "IDPASC School" (Asiago 2017), "ML4HEP", Bangalore 2023
• "Machine learning for HEP" at: "Data Science School", Braga, Portugal 2019, "YANDEX Machine Learning for HEP School", EPFL, Switzerland 2020; Deeplearn Autumn school, Lulea, Sweden 2022
• "Optimization of detector design" at the INFN Machine Learning School in Erice, Italy 2024, and at the Chiavassa-Bonaudi school, Cogne, Italy 2025
• "Artificial Intelligence for Medical Diagnosis" at the USERN School in Translational Medicine, Monastir (Tunisia) 2025

THESIS OFFERS

The ones below are tentative titles of possible theses at laurea, masters, and PhD level. Contact me for more information if you are interested, or to volunteer for a different one if it fits my research interests!

Ph. D. Thesis opportunities

• Search for new physics with CMS with unsupervised learning techniques
• Particle identification in granular calorimeters with deep learning
• Neuromorphic computing for fundamental physics
• Foundation models for co-design of future experiments

Master and Bachelor Thesis opportunities

• Design optimization of detectors for muon tomography
• Optimization of hybrid calorimeters for future colliders
• Optimization of a ground array for gamma-ray detection
• Neuromorphic computing applications for detector design and optimization
• Optimization of in-ice and in-water arrays for neutrino detectors
• Design of the TAMBO detector for cosmological tau neutrino searches
• Application of anomaly detection techniques to new physics searches with CMS
• Particle ID with deep learning in a highly granular detector
• Study of atmospheric cosmic showers with drone-mounted detectors

Here is a list of 50 laurea and 11 Ph.D. students I am or have been an advisor of:
- Undegraduate and masters: M. Scardellato, G. Cortiana, E. Stocco, D. Frigo, M. Tosi, P. Vischia, A. Zavanella, M. Tosi, E. Moretti, D. Perizzolo, R. Casagrande, C. Favaro, P. Bortignon, P. Vischia, A. Zucchetta, D. Ceoldo, C. Gottardo, N. Riolfi, A. Balata, M. Migliorini, A. Casa, V. Fioroni, G. Delaini, M. Fumanelli, C. Maccani, H. Hanif, F. Chiandotto, M. Mojsovska, S. Tosato, B. dal Sasso, A. Demin, L. Quagliarella, A. Breccia, S. Yadav, S. Guglielmini, E. Arcolin, A. Bordignon, R. Lui, S. Yadav, E. Coradin, G. Celotto, J. Marino, S. de Vidi, F. Bergamaschi, E. Lupi, R. Rayesh, A. de Vita, R. Carroccio, P. Andreacchio, U. Noyan
- Ph. D.: Dr. Giorgio Cortiana, Dr. Marco de Mattia, Dr. Mia Tosi, Dr. Luca Perrozzi, Dr. Alberto Zucchetta, Dr. Martino dall'Osso, Dr. Pablo de Castro Manzano, Dr. Hevjin Yarar, Dr. Lukas Layer, Dr. Federico Nardi, Dr. Awais Khan

CONFERENCE TALKS, SEMINARS AND COLLOQUIA

Selected conference talks

• "Toward the co-design of scientific experiments" (keynote talk), AI4X conference, Singapore 2026
• "The second AI Revolution in Particle Physics" (keynote talk), Physics Days, Lulea 2025
• "Artificial Intelligence for Physics Research", Vth USERN Congress, Tehran, Iran 2020
• "From SU(3) to Three Quark Families", 8th ICNFP, Kolymbari, Greece 2019 (invited lecture at M. Gell-Mann memorial session)
• "Hadron Collider Searches for Diboson Resonances", 7th ICNFP, Kolymbari, Greece 2018 (invited plenary talk),
• "Hemisphere Mixing", EPS 2017, Venezia lido, Italy
• "Recent Results of the CMS Experiment", 6th int. conference on HEP in the LHC era, Valparaiso, Chile 2016 (invited talk)
• "Standard Model Tests at the Tevatron", PASCOS, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom 2007
• "Searches for the Standard Model Higgs Boson at the Tevatron", Moriond QCD, La Thuile, Italy 2005
• "Top Studies", Frontier Science 2002, Frascati, Italy 2002 (invited summary talk)

Selected colloquia and seminars at Universities and Research institutes

• "The second AI Revolution in Fundamental Science", Physics Colloquium, MIT IAIFI institute, Cambridge, USA 2026
• "Sticking to the roots of machine learning", PhyStat Seminar, CERN 15 June 2022.
• "Fundamental Statistics for Discovery in Fundamental Physics", Physics Colloquium, Universite' Catholique de Louvain, 14 June 2018.
• "Fundamental Statistics for Discovery in Fundamental Physics", Oxford University, 24 April 2018.
• "Extraordinary Claims: The 0.000029% Solution", Physics Colloquium, Tel Aviv University, 1 January 2017.
• "Anomalies in Collider Data", Physics Colloquium, Northwestern University, 11 November 2016.
• "Status and Prospects of Higgs Searches at the Tevatron", Universidad de Valencia, 8 April 2010.
• "Anomalous multi-muon events in CDF", Universite' de Geneve, 20 March 2009.
• "Observation of Z Decays to b-Quark Pairs at the Tevatron Collider", Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 24 September 1998.

PUBLISHING AND ORGANIZATION OF CONFERENCES

Publishing
As editor-in-chief of the journal "AI and Brain" I am searching for interesting research papers on topics at the intersection of studies of AI and the human brain - please contact me if you are interested in publishing with us.

Conference organization
I have contributed as a member of local organizing committees, as session chair, or session convener to the organization of several conferences, workshops, and dissemination events in particle physics and related topics:

• European Physical Society Conference on HEP (Venezia Lido, Italy 2017), member of local organizing committee
• Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum: ideator and chair of session on "Statistical Methods for Physics Analysis in the XXI Century" (2016-present); member of local organizing committee, 2016.
• International conference on New Frontiers in Physics (2014-present), organizer of parallel sessions, organizer of social events, chair of plenary sessions
• INFN School of Statistics (2013-present), member of scientific organizing committee
• Darkmachines collaboration workshops (2018-present), member of organizing committee, chair of sessions
• International Workshop on Advanced Computing and Analysis Techniques in Physics Research (Saas-Fee, 2019), chair of parallel session
• MODE Workshop on differentiable programming for fundamental physics: member of organizing committee (2021-).

REVIEWS AND REFEREEING

Reviews
I have peer-reviewed scientific publications for the following journals and publishers: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, Computer Physics Communications, Journal of Instrumentation, Physics Math Central A, The Review of Particle Properties, Il Nuovo Cimento, International Journal of Modern Physics A, Computing and Software for Big Science, Progress of Particle and Nuclear Physics, MDPI Instruments, MDPI Symmetry, SciPost, Physica Scripta, NeurIPS, Nature Communications, Springer Nature, Physics Review D, JHEP, Reviews in Modern Physics, Princeton Press, Physical Review Letters, LHEP, Machine Learning in Science and Technology, Nature Physics, Annals of Geophysics, Princeton Univ. Press, EPJC

Refereeing
I have reviewed grant proposals for INFN (Italy), the NWO and the FOM (the Netherlands), the STFC and the Royal Society (Great Britain), the QNRF (Qatar), the HSE (Russia), the European Community Horizon 2020 program (ITN and ERC), and the ANR and CNRS (France). In addition, I am currently a referee of the BES III and MUonE experiments for INFN.

Advisory
I am a member of the Advisory Board of the EC-funded SilentBorder project, and of the advisory board of the USERN organization. I am also a member of the Editorial Board of "MDPI Particles" journal.

Prizes
I have selected researchers for prizes awarded by INFN, the USERN organization, the International Data Analysis Olympiad, and the CMS experiment

OUTREACH ACTIVITIES

My outreach activity is intense and multi-pronged:

• I have been active in science outreach with a blog since 2005. The blog is currently hosted by the Science2.0 site; overall, it has collected over 15 million visits to a total of over 1400 science popularization articles.
  
• In 2016 I published the book "Anomaly! Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab", where the story of the top quark discovery and a number of other new physics searches with the CDF detector at Fermilab are described. If you want to read it but do not want to purchase it, please contact me to get a non-distributable pdf version.
  
• I wrote several articles on physics research topics in Italian newspapers (Il Sole-24 Ore, Il Manifesto), and two feature articles on "Physics World" (March 2011 issue: "On the road to discovery" and "Signatures of New Physics").
  
• I am the organizer of Venice events and exhibits for Art and Science Across Italy, an outreach project to involve high-school students in physics-themed artistic creations.
• I am the outreach coordinator of the INSIGHTS ETN.

I have also organized and/or given presentations at over 30 public conferences, high-school lectures, and outreach events. Below I list a short selection of such events.

• Invited talk ("Communicating discoveries in the blog era") and panel discussion on "Blogs, Big Physics and Breaking News" at the World Conference of Science Journalists, London 2009 (with Matthew Chalmers and James Gillies, see a summary by M. Durrani on Physics World here )
  
• Invited talk "Universe Dissectors" at TED-X Flanders, Antwerp 2011 (with Peter Woit, see video on YouTube).
  
• Invited guest to the talk show "Il vaso di Pandora" ("Istruzione tradizionale o valorizzazione dei talenti?" - see YouTube video) for the TeleChiara network, 2016 (with Paola Zocca).
  
• Public lecture at Festivaletteratura 2018 Mantova on "Scienza e societa'" (with Massimiano Bucchi).
  
• Panel discussion on "Artificial Intelligence: past, present and future" at DESY, Hamburg (7 July 2019, with Pierre Baldi, Andrey Ustyuzhanin, Glen Cowan).
  

COLLABORATION AND NETWORKING

Besides participating in the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC (and previously in the CDF experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron collider), I am involved in the following collaborative endeavours:

• EUCAIF
• SCIANCE
• MODE, an international collaboration of physicists and computer scientists developing differentiable programming tools for the end-to-end optimization of the design of particle physics detectors
• DarkMachines, an international collaboration of over 100 astronomers, physicists, astrophysicists and computer scientists developing machine learning tools for dark matter searches
• GradHep, a small group of physicists and computer scientists developing differentiable programming tools for the optimization of physics measurement
• ML-INFN, a project for an end-to-end use of machine learning for INFN research
• SWGO, an ultra-high-energy Gamma Ray ground-based detector

In addition, I am or have been involved in the following EC-funded projects:

• as Scientific co-lead and PI of the INFN node for the PHINDER EIC-funded project
• as Scientific Coordinator and PI of the INFN node for the AMVA4NewPhysics network, an ETN focusing on machine learning developments for HEP research (2014-2019)
• as PI of the INFN-Padova node and Outreach Coordinator for the INSIGHTS network, an ETN focusing on statistics and machine learning advancements for scientific research (2017-present)
• as a member of iMPACT, an ERC-Consolidator granted project on a fast device for proton therapy led by Prof. P. Giubilato (Univ. Padova)

CONTACTS

Send e-mail	Dr. Tommaso Dorigo First Researcher, INFN-Padova Email: dorigo (at) pd (dot) infn (dot) it
Phone:	Office tel.: +39 0499677230 Mobile tel.: +39 3666995594
Snail mail:	Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia "G.Galilei" via Francesco Marzolo 8, 35131 Padova ITALY