Visitors

Visit by Marc Sarzi

Today we have the pleasure of hosting Marc Sarzi, visiting us from the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium. He works on extragalactic astronomy, particularly regarding integral-field spectroscopy aimed at studying the ionized gas content of nearby galaxies. He will be delivering a talk by the title of “Probing Environmental Drivers of Galaxy Evolution in the Fornax Cluster”. Welcome Marc!

Visit by Michael Zantedeschi

Today we have the pleasure of hosting Michael Zantedeschi, visiting us from the University of Pisa! Michael is currently a postdoc at the University of Pisa, and years ago was a student at the University of Trento, after which he did his PhD in Munich with Gia Dvali. He is a recognized expert on the topic of black holes, especially the memory burden effect, which he was one of the first to seriously work on. He will be delivering a talk precisely on the topic by the title of “Evaporating black holes: how the burden of their memory stabilizes them”. Welcome Michael!

Visit by Zakaria Belkhadria

For the next week and a half we have Zakaria Belkhadria, who recently received his PhD from the University of Cagliari and the University of Geneva, visiting us funded by a CosmoVerse COST STSM grant. He will be working with me and Max Rinaldi on the complementarity between strong-field and cosmological tests of modified gravity. Welcome Zakaria!

Visit by Alex Ganz

For the next three days we have Alex Ganz visiting us from the University of Hannover! Alex is currently a postdoc in the group of Guillem Domènech, and has worked on several topics of interest to our group, such as modified gravity (including mimetic gravity) and gravitational waves. He will be delivering a talk by the title of “Exploring modified gravity theories”. Welcome Alex!

Visit by Enrico Specogna

For the next two days we have Enrico Specogna visiting us from the University of Sheffield! Enrico is currently a PhD student working with Eleonora Di Valentino on several topics of interest to our group, such as cosmological tensions, massive neutrinos, inflation, and modified gravity. He will be delivering a talk by the title of “Modified gravity & friends vs current CMB data”. Welcome Enrico!

Visit by Anjan Sen and Antonio Junior Iovino

For the next few days we have the pleasure of hosting Anjan Sen (who already visited us two years ago) and Antonio Junior Iovino, visiting us from Jamia Millia Islamia and NYU Abu Dhabi respectively. They will be giving us two talks respectively on an innovative way of measuring the low-redshift expansion rate and constrain the physics of Dark Energy at characteristic redshifts, and on recent important developments in primordial black hole physics. Welcome Anjan and Antonio!

Visit by Yifan Chen

For the next couple of days we are delighted to have Yifan Chen visiting our group! Yifan is currently a postdoc at the Niels Bohr Institute, within the group of Prof. Vitor Cardoso, but will soon start a faculty position at Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai. He is an expert on various topics at the crossroads of astrophysics and particle physics, especially related to black hole observations, a topic on which we collaborated in a 2022 paper in PRD on the topic of superradiance and BH shadows, and where he has several impactful works. Yifan will also be delivering a seminar by the title of “Strong Gravity Frontier of Ultralight Boson Searches”. Welcome Yifan!

Visit by Lei Zu

Today we have the pleasure of hosting Lei Zu (祖磊), currently a postdoc at the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) in Warsaw, and an expert on various signatures of dark sector physics in astrophysical and cosmological observables. Lei delivered a very nice seminar by the title of “Exploring dark matter non-gravitational interactions through weak lensing”. Welcome Lei!

Visit by Marc Henneaux

For the next two days we have the pleasure of hosting Prof. Marc Henneaux, a renown theoretical physicist from Collège de France. Marc is here as visiting chair within the University of Trento-College de France visiting chair program (similarly to Prof. Françoise Combes last year). He will be delivering two seminars by the title of “Ultrarelativistic Limits of Gravity and Carroll Group” and a colloquium by the title of “Asymptotic Symmetries in Gauge Theories with Emphasis on Gravity”. Welcome Marc!

Visit by Davide Racco and Flaminia Giacomini

For the next days we have the pleasure of hosting Davide Racco and Flaminia Giacomini, who are visiting us from Zurich (respectively from the University of Zurich+ETH, and ETH). Both are very well-known researchers with interests at the intersection of particle physics and cosmology (Davide) and at the interface between quantum theory/quantum information and gravity (Flaminia). They will be giving seminars by the titles of “Insights on fundamental physics from Gravitational Wave backgrounds” and “Quantum effects in gravity from a delocalised quantum source” . Welcome Davide and Flaminia!

Farewell to Jun-Qian Jiang

Today we say farewell to Jun-Qian Jiang, who after an extremely successful 6 months as a long-term visiting PhD student, is returning to China (below is a picture from our farewell pizza dinner at Doc: from left to right we have Simony Santos da Costa, Marco Calzà, Guan-Wen Yuan, Jun-Qian Jiang, and yours sincerely). Jun-Qian’s time here was extremely productive, with 3 very interesting papers, many more in the making, and several key contributions to my group’s activities, for which his arrival was extremely important. Thanks a lot Jun-Qian for everything you taught me, and have a nice trip back to China!

Visit by Valerio Faraoni

For the next couple of weeks we have the great pleasure of hosting Valerio Faraoni, currently a Full Professor at Bishop’s University in Canada, and arguably one of the world experts on all things related to gravity. Valerio will also be delivering a seminar by the title of “A bird's eye view of the first-order thermodynamics of scalar-tensor gravity”. Welcome Valerio!

Visit by Benjamin Knorr

This week we have the pleasure to host Benjamin Knorr, currently a postdoc at NORDITA and arguably one of the world experts on asymptotic safety, a highly non-trivial generalization of the idea of perturbative renormalization. Benjamin also delivered a very nice talk by the title of “Asymptotic safety meets field redefinitions”. Welcome Benjamin!

Visit by Leonardo Giani

We are delighted to have Leonardo (Leo) Giani visiting us once more! Leo is a postdoc at the University of Queensland, where he is working on a bunch of very interesting things gravity- and cosmology-related, including our recent work on Laniakea. We took the opportunity to catch up on a few ideas which had been hanging around (and are turning into student projects), while Leo also gave a seminar by the title of “Cosmology from the point of view of an almost spherical cow”.

Visit by Luca Visinelli

We are delighted to have Luca Visinelli visiting us once more! Luca is a Professor at the Tsung-Dao Lee Insittute in Shanghai Jiao Tong University: he is a very well-known scientist with broad research interests spanning dark matter, dark energy, and black holes. It was a very enjoyable visit during which we took the opportunity to catch up on our ongoing projects (especially replying to pending referee reports!) and enjoy the surroundings of Povo, while Luca also gave a seminar by the title of “Theoretical motivations for a light boson and its phenomenology”.

Visit by Francesco Di Filippo

We’re excited to welcome our latest visitor: Francesco Di Filippo from Charles University in Prague! Francesco, hosted by Max Rinaldi, is currently a postdoc at Charles University in Prague, where he has been doing a lot of interesting work especially on regular black holes and possible instabilities (or not) thereof, together with a bunch of experts in the field including Stefano Liberati and Matt Visser - he will be delivering a seminar at TIFPA by the title of “Non-singular black holes: Open issues and implications”. Welcome Francesco!

Visit by Marc Schneider

We’re excited to welcome our latest visitor: Marc Schneider from SISSA! Marc is currently a postdoc at SISSA, where he has been doing a lot of interesting work especially on the possibility that singularities in GR may be somewhat tamed once quantum effects are taken into account, at which point fields and stress-energy tensor should be treated more as distributions than functions. Marc will be delivering a seminar at TIFPA by the title of “Probing the Big Bang with Quantum Fields”. He already delivered a very interesting talk on the subject at the XXV SIGRAV conference, and I look forward to hearing more and discussing these ideas in a more informal setting. Welcome Marc!

Jun-Qian Jiang joins my group!

I’m very happy to welcome my latest group member, Jun-Qian Jiang (江俊钱)! Jun-Qian is currently a PhD student at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Prof. Yun-Song Piao, and has been doing a lot of interesting and very diversified work in the fields of cosmological tensions, inflation, gravitational waves, and so on. He joins my group for the next 6 months as a long-term visiting PhD student. We still have to figure out what we will be working on, but it likely will have to do with cosmological tensions and possibly implications for inflation. Welcome Jun-Qian, and I hope you will enjoy your stay in Italy!

Visit by Françoise Combes

For the next two days we have the pleasure of hosting Prof. Françoise Combes, a renown astrophysicist from Collège de France. Françoise is here as visiting chair within the University of Trento-College de France visiting chair program. She will be delivering a seminar by the title of “Black Holes and Active Galaxy Nuclei” and a colloquium by the title of “The Puzzle of Dark Matter”. With the rest of our group we had a nice lunch together at Orostube in Povo, where the carbonara pizza I ate was particularly good and worthy of a picture! Welcome Françoise!