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Hi, I am David

Dr. David Freire Fernández

Postdoctoral Researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory

I am a nuclear and particle physics researcher with deep expertise across experimental design, management of experiments, software development, data analysis, mass spectrometry and half-life spectroscopy. I have built multiple open-source scientific software tools, which can be seen at my Github using Python, C, C++ and Fortran.

Skills

Experience

1

Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States of America

Best known for its central role in helping develop the first atomic bomb, LANL is one of the world’s largest and most advanced scientific institutions.

Postdoctoral Researcher in the Particle and Nuclear Physics and Applications Group (P-3)

Oct 2024 - Present


Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics

October 2021 - September 2024

Heidelberg, Germany

The Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg is a prestigious research institute under the Max Planck Society, renowned for its contributions to nuclear, particle, and astroparticle physics. It is internationally recognized for pioneering fundamental research on cosmic phenomena, quantum interactions, and precision experiments.

Postdoctoral Researcher at the Stored and Cooled Ions Division

July 2024 - September 2024

Doctoral Researcher at the Stored and Cooled Ions Division

October 2021 - June 2024

2

3
University of Granada

February 2021 - August 2021

Granada, Spain

The University of Granada (UGR) is a prestigious public university in Spain, founded in 1531, known for its strong academic tradition and research excellence. It is internationally recognized for its contributions to humanities, sciences, and technology, attracting students and scholars from around the world.

Junior Researcher at the Ion Traps and Lasers Laboratory

February 2021 - August 2021

Education

Dr. rer. nat. in Experimental Nuclear Physics (magna cum laude)
Thesis:
First nuclear two-photon decay measurements at storage rings
Supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Klaus Blaum (MPIK, Germany), Prof. Dr. Yuri Litvinov (GSI, Germany), PD. Dr. Wolfram Korten (CEA-Saclay, France)
M.Sc. in Physics
Thesis:
Implementation of a micro-trap system for experiments with two-ion crystals
Supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Daniel Rodríguez Rubiales (UGR, Spain)
B.Sc. in Physics
Thesis:
Detection of fluorescence of Calcium-40 ions in ion traps
Supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Daniel Rodríguez Rubiales (UGR, Spain)

Github Projects

RionID
RionID
Developer Oct 2021 - Present

Collection of code for the identification of ringed ions in Python.

TDMchopS
TDMchopS
Developer 2022 - Present

Code that chops NTCAP data into time chunks for high-precision analysis of Schottky signals.

RionMass
RionMass
Developer 2023 - Present

Toolkit for mass measurements of ringed ions implementing the CMM with polynomial fit and splines.

iqtools
iqtools
Contributor Oct 2021 - Present

Collection of code for working with offline complex valued time series data in Python.

LISEreader
LISEreader
Developer 2021 - Present

Tool for reading LISE files.

legoplot
legoplot
Developer

3D LEGO-style bar plot using the Plotly library.

dfreiref.github.io
Owner 2025 - Present

Personal website and portfolio.

Rest of projects (+31)
Owner

The rest of my public projects

Publications

Measurement of the Isolated Nuclear Two-Photon Decay in 72Ge

First Proton-Induced Cross Sections on a Stored Rare Ion Beam: Measurement of 118Te(p,γ) for Explosive Nucleosynthesis

Laser spectroscopy of accelerator-produced hydrogen-like 208Bi82+ – a test of strong-field QED with 10^5 ions

First simultaneous measurement of the gamma-ray and neutron emission probabilities in inverse kinematics at a heavy-ion storage ring

First electron conversion factor measurements at storage rings

Bρ-cutted combined Schottky plus Isochronous Mass Spectrometry (S+IMS)

The first in-beam reaction measurement at CRYRING@ESR using the CARME array

TDMchopS: A toolkit for automatic chopping of continuously acquired complex valued radio frequency samples
Zenodo 2023

RionID: Collection of code for the identification of ringed ions in Python
Zenodo 2023

First measurement of the neutron-emission probability with a surrogate reaction in inverse kinematics at a heavy-ion storage ring

Indirect measurements of neutron-induced reaction crosssections at heavy-ion storage rings

Proton capture on stored radioactive Te ions