Claudia Gemme, researcher at INFN in Genova, has had a varied career with the ATLAS Collaboration. From her work on the construction and commissioning of the ATLAS Pixel detector, to a career in physics analysis and the ATLAS Publication Committee, she now leads a key upgrade of the ATLAS detector: the ATLAS Inner Tracker (ITk).

The High-Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) is scheduled to begin colliding protons in 2026. This major improvement to CERN’s flagship accelerator will increase the total number of collisions in the ATLAS experiment by a factor of 10. To cope with this increase, ATLAS is preparing a complex series of upgrades including the installation of new detectors using state-of-the-art technology, the replacement of ageing electronics, and the upgrade of its trigger and data acquisition system.