My group as of November 2025. From left to right: Simony Santos da Costa (postdoc), Davide Pedrotti (PhD student), Guan-Wen Yuan (postdoc), me (group leader), Marco Calzà (postdoc), Miguel Sabogal (PhD student), and Marco Bella (MSc student).

 

We are a young and active group working on some of the deepest open questions in cosmology and gravity. We try to make sense of how the Universe works, and have fun while doing so 🙃

 

CURRENT GROUP MEMBERS

 

POSTDOCS

Marco Calzà

Joined January 2024
Education: BSc University of Trento (2013), MSc University of Trento (2018), PhD University of Coimbra (2024)
Research interests: black hole physics, primordial black holes, Hawking evaporation
Publications [INSPIRE-HEP]
5 papers together

 

Simony Santos da Costa (personal webpage)

Caritro Fellow
Joined March 2024
Education: BSc Paraíba State University (2012), MSc Federal University of Campina Grande (2015), PhD National Observatory of Rio de Janeiro (2019)
Research interests: cosmology, cosmological tensions, dark energy, inflation
Publications [INSPIRE-HEP; Google Scholar]
4 papers together

 

Guan-Wen Yuan (袁官文)

Joined April 2024
Education: BSc-MSc Sichuan University (2018), PhD University of Science and Technology of China & Purple Mountain Observatory (2023)
Research interests: astroparticle physics, dark matter, black hole physics, high-redshift galaxies
Publications [INSPIRE-HEP; Google Scholar]
2 papers together

 

PHD STUDENTS

Davide Pedrotti

Joined November 2023
Education: BSc University of Trento (2021), MSc University of Trento (2023)
Research interests: cosmological observations and tensions, dark matter and dark energy, black hole physics, primordial black holes
Publications [INSPIRE-HEP; Google Scholar]
9 papers together

 

Miguel Antonio Sabogal García (personal webpage)

Joined November 2025
Education: BSc University of Atlántico (2022), MSc Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (2025)
Research interests: cosmological observations and tensions, dark matter and dark energy, large-scale structure, machine learning
Publications [INSPIRE-HEP; Google Scholar]
1 paper together

 

MSC STUDENTS

Marco Bella

Joined December 2024
Co-advisor: Vivian Poulin
Thesis topic: early dark energy and the Hubble tension

 

Edvig Selimaj

Joined January 2026
Co-advisor: Miguel Sabogal
Thesis topic: non-parametric reconstruction of the expansion history of the Universe

 

BSc STUDENTS

Andrea Di Pompeo

BSc student since January 2026
Thesis topic: entanglement in curved space-time

 

Alessandro La Sala

BSc student (BSc in Mathematics) since December 2024
Thesis topic: General Relativity and Schwarzschild black holes

 

JOIN THE GROUP

Interested in joining my group? This page contains essential information on how I work, the different ways to join the group, including what opportunities are (and are not) available, and should be read very carefully before getting in touch.

FORMER GROUP MEMBERS

 

PHD STUDENTS

Jun-Qian Jiang (江俊钱)

Free mover PhD student from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (March-September 2024)
Advisor: Prof. Yun-Song Piao
Subsequent position: postdoctoral researcher at KASI
4 papers together

 

MSC STUDENTS

Leonardo Comini

MSc student (March 2024-July 2025)
Thesis: Testing cosmological models with JWST high-redshift galaxies
Final grade: 110/110

 

Mattia Scotto

MSc student (January 2024-March 2025)
Thesis: Dark energy models featuring negative energy densities: growth of structure and novel perturbation-level cosmological signatures
Final grade: 110/110 cum laude
Subsequent position: high school teacher at I.I.S. “Alcide Degasperi”,
Borgo Valsugana

 

Giovanni Piccoli

MSc student (June 2023-March 2024)
Thesis: The very small-scale primordial Universe: complementary tests from cosmic neutrinos and gravitational waves
Final grade: 110/110 cum laude
Subsequent position: PhD student at the University of Zurich

 

Davide Pedrotti

MSc student (November 2022-October 2023), double degree with the University of Tübingen
Co-advisor: Kostas Kokkotas
Thesis: Studies on quasi-normal modes and shadows of black holes
Final grade: 110/110 cum laude
Subsequent position: PhD student at the University of Trento
9 papers together

 

BSC STUDENTS

Sebastiano Chinchio

BSc student (thesis defended September 2025)
Thesis: Exploring massive neutrino signatures in the ΛCDM model
Final grade: 102/110
Subsequent position: MSc student in Astrophysics and Cosmology at the University of Padova

 

Giada Daldoss

BSc student (BSc in Mathematics - thesis defended September 2025)
Thesis: Nozioni di base di Relatività Generale con applicazioni al problema dell’energia oscura (Basic notions of General Relativity with applications to the dark energy problem)
Final grade: 99/110
Subsequent position: MSc student in Physics at the University of Trieste

 

Pietro Fracca

BSc student (thesis defended November 2025)
Thesis: A beginner’s introduction to the ΛCDM cosmological model
Final grade: 99/110
Subsequent position: MSc student in Physics at the University of Bologna

 

OTHER FORMER ADVISEES

 

Alexander Reeves (personal webpage)

Part III (equivalent to MSc) student at the University of Cambridge (September 2020-July 2021)
Co-advisors: Blake Sherwin and George Efstathiou
Thesis: Massive neutrinos do not help early dark energy in restoring concordance
Final grade: 1ˢᵗ class
Subsequent position: PhD student at ETH Zurich
2 papers together

OTHER STUDENTS I COLLABORATED CLOSELY WITH

 

I have also collaborated closely with a number of students other than the ones shown above (for which I was official advisor) throughout my career, in many cases acting as mentor or de facto co-advisor for them. These students I collaborated with are shown below: the years given below refer to those during which we collaborated closely and the person in question was a student, and names in bold indicate students for whom I wrote recommendation letters.