People

I am a proud member of SPINS, the Society of Physicists Interested in Non-aligned Spins, founded by Salvo Vitale. Researchers like me have finally unionized to celebrate the unpredictable orientations of black hole spins. From our constitution: “We believe that in the quest to understand the universe, it’s the exceptional flavors — not the vanilla ones — that hold the deepest truths.”

As we’ve done it for several years now, this summer we’re hosting an undergraduate student from the US-based IREU program in gravitational-wave physics. Sterling Scarlett is joining us from Boston University and will be working with Nick on a theory-heavy project. Welcome!

We’re going to have quite a few visitors in the next few months. They will be giving amazing seminars, with lots of research ideas floating around: Stephen Green from Nottingham, Cecilia Sgalletta from Trieste, Francisco Duque from the AEI, Angela Borchers from the other AEI, Lorenzo Pompili also from AEI (!), Ilaria Caporali from Pisa, Aleksandra Olejak from the MPA at Garching, Pantelis Pnigouras from Alicante, Lucy McNeill from Kyoto, James Alvey from Cambridge, and Valerio De Luca from U. of Pennsylvania. Hope I didn’t forget anyone… This is going to be exciting 🙂

Congrats to Alex Toubiana, postdoc with us, who was just awarded an independent fellowship from the Italian Research Ministry. The scheme is called Young Researcher 2024 and will fund Alex and his research for 3 years.

In 2024…. We welcomed Tristan, Chiara, Caroline, Rodrigo, Alex, Federico, and Zachos (group accretion at the Eddington limit). Michele started a faculty in Marseille, Daria graduated, Viola almost graduated and is fighting the paperwork in Marseille, Giulia went to Cambridge, Alice went to the AEI, Cecilia went to Nottingham, Costantino went to Novara. Ringdowns, EMRIs, stochastic backgrounds, p_det, catastrophes, SBI, and 3G detectors don’t have secrets for us. I think 13 BSc and 3 MSc students defended their projects with us, not sure. Arianna and Nick are two Giovani Talenti, Alex is a Young Researcher. We went to the lake together, got risotto together, and organized a conference named after Inter’s striker. If you don’t know what to eat for dinner, define a likelihood and sample it (Loutrel et al. 2024). Or put pins on google maps (Borhanian et al. 2024). You look at data, I look at the physics (Bruel et al. 2024).

We had a really nice before-the-holiday group dinner yesterday night. We went to a very traditional Milanese trattoria, and almost everyone got “risotto con l’osso buco” (amazing, you should try!). Our Master’s students joined us as, and with them we’re now a group of 20 people. Thaks all for working together, see you all next year.

Huge congrats to Arianna Renzini and Nick Loutrel who won two of this year’s “Giovani Talenti” (Young Talents) prizes from the University of Milano-Bicocca. These are internal grants for postdocs: there were four grants awarded in Physics in total and two of them are from our group! Let’s gooooooooooo

Our group is accreting people at the Eddington rate! There are 5 new postdocs and 2 PhD students who have just started or are about to start:

• Zachos Roupas is joining Bicocca as a Marie Curie Fellow with an independent research program on stellar clusters.
• Caroline Owen comes as a postdoc from Illinois, with expertise in fundamental physics and testing GR.
• Alexandre Toubiana is joining as a postdoc from the AEI and likes gravity at all frequencies.
• Rodrigo Tenorio is a new postdoc coming from UIB (Balearic Islands) and he’s going to be the group member who’s the closest to real GW data.
• Tristan Bruel comes as a postdoc from Nice and will bring us back to astrophysics instead.
• Federico De Santi graduated from the University of Pisa and will join as a PhD student.
• Last but definitely not least, Chiara Anselmo will also join as a PhD student after an MSc degree in Rome.

Group meetings are funny and busy these days, with too many ideas going around.

We run a weekly group meeting to share research updates, and yesterday was a special one… Instead of the usual room, we had group meeting at lake Como. No laptopts, almost no physics, but swimming, ball games, spritz, and lake-fish dinner together.

This week we welcome Ava Bailey from Duke University (USA), who will be completing a summer project with is under the IREU program, of which we are external partners. Ava will be working with Nick on measuring the dispersion relation of gravitational waves in modified gravity.

Huge huge congrats to Zacharias Roupas who was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship with us! Zachos is currently based at the British University in Egypt and will be joining my group in Milan in the Fall of 2024. The Marie Curie Fellowship program is a prestigious postdoctoral scheme operating at the EU level and, together with Arianna, we’ll now have two Marie Curie grantees in the group. Zachos’ winning proposal is titled “Black hole spin and mass function in gaseous proto-clusters” (nickname: protoBH).

Hey Chris, just wanted to say thanks because you wanted to understand what was going on, for that ski run down the Highland Bowl in Aspen, for sending me yet another version of those StarTrack files I had to postprocess, for those obscure code comments in Polish, for that last chat in Japan last month (I’ll finish that calculation about tides we sketched at the board!), and for the energy. I’m sure you’re on a beautiful mountain.

mykeeper.com/profile/KrzysztofBelczynski

Much like Spotify, here is our group “Wrapped”, 2023 edition!

Some of the group highlights include… We welcomed Pippa, Nick, Arianna, Sshorab, and Matteo. We said bye to Matt who moved to MIT and Nate who moved to Canada, while Daria remains our UK stronghold. Michele got a faculty job, Viola got a postdoc, Davide got a PRIN grant, and Giulia got a SigmaXi grant. We graduated something like 12 BSc students and 4 MSc students (and all 4 of them now have PhD positions). A few long-term visitors (Francesco, Giulia, Harrison) made the group even better for a while. We wrote lots of papers, gave lots of talks, and ate lots of cakes. LIGO is taking data, LISA is being adopted, Virgo has seen better days, and GR is still true. Arianna was in the newspaper, Sshorab broke Davide’s ribs, Alice danced Greek dances, and Costantino got his first American coffee ever. Our gwpopnext conference was a blast and we discussed too much, thunderstorms included.

… now get ready for all the 2024 surprises!

Arianna Renzini (Marie Curie Fellow in my group) is on the Italian national newspaper “Corriere della Sera” today!

Here is the online version: Arianna Renzini, la studiosa di Astrofisica corteggiata da tutto il mondo: «Basta cervelli in fuga, lavorerò a Milano»

But it was also on the printed thing distributed everywhere!

(That picture was taken in my office… So my office is also in the national newspaper today! Wooo!)

Our group is getting some tremendous additions, with 5 people joining in the fall of 2023! The scope of our research is getting broader and broader 🙂

• Pippa Cole is joining us as a postdoc from Amsterdam and she’s going to teach us fun things about dark matter, environmental effects on GW measurements, primordial black-holes etc.
• Ssohrab Borhanian is also coming in as a postdoc (from Jena, Germany and Penn State before that), with all you can ever hope to know about 3G detectors.
• Nick Loutrel is a new postdoc from Rome (and Princeton before, and Montana before) which strengthens the analytical / modeling side of the group.
• Arianna Renzini is coming as a postdoc from sunny Caltech with her own Marie Curie Fellowship, ready to make a splash with stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds!
• Matteo Boschini is a new PhD student, after a successful MSc degree with a cool project on numerical-relativity surrogate models.

We’re soon going to have Giulia Capurri who will be visiting us for a few months from Trieste. Welcome aboard all! There are like 13 people at group meetings now…

Two students just completed their Bachelor’s degree with research projects in our group.

• Leonardo Toti worked with myself and Giulia Fumagalli on exploring black-hole merger trees in dense clusters.
• Simone Restuccia worked with Costantino Pacilio on applying dimensionality-reduction techniques to black-hole ringdowns.

I had the honor of heading their graduation committee and could call them “physicists” for the very first time (and the Italian ceremonial sentence is quite imposing: “ coi poteri conferitami… “). Congrats Simone and Leonardo!

Please let me introduce Dr Matthew Mould… After N papers (where N is a lot) and a 4h+15min viva discussion, Matt has completed his PhD in gravitational-wave astronomy at the University of Birmingham. WooooO! The examiners were Annelies Mortier from Birmingham and Uli Sperhake from Cambridge, who went through a thesis with more than 600 references…. Matt will be continuing his already successful career with a postdoc at MIT, LIGO lab. From my side, Matt is (actually, was!) my first PhD student and spending 3+ years working with him has been amazing. Thanks, Matt for teaching me Bayesian stats and never letting go when I was saying crap.

First thing you do after a 4h 15m viva? Eat a cookie baked by Giulia!

Welcome Harrison Blake! My group is hosting a student from the IREU program in Gravitational Physics, which is administered by the University of Florida. Harrison is visiting from Ohio State University and will be working with Michele Mancarella on forecasting the science with can do with gravitational waves from the Moon…

It’s student time! Massive congratulations to two of my students who just graduated.

The star of the day is Matteo Boschini, who completed his MSc project with me after a long visit at the AEI (Postdam, Germany) to collaborate with Vijay Varma. Matteo worked out an amazing extension of current numerical-relativity surrogate models… stay tuned for a paper because this is going to be cool!

Daniele Chirico completed his BSc studies with a sweet research project on supernova explosions, orbits, and kicks. He’s staying in Milan for his MSc degree now, so wait a bit for his successes!

That’s Matteo discussing black-hole remnants

Welcome to 2023… and what better way to start the new year than welcoming a new friend! Alice Spadaro (who has recently graduated with an MSc degree here in Milan) is now officially starting her PhD in my group. Alice always smiles, likes surfing, and of course is into gravitational waves 🙂 .

Huge congrats to two of my students who graduated today!

• Matteo Muriano completed a funny BSc project on black-hole merger trees.
• Giovanni Cavallotto went all in for his MSc research: he basically “fixed” black-hole binary spin precession at 2PN! (which is pretty cool, stay tuned for these results!).

They both defended quite brilliantly, good luck with everything now!

More graduations today! I had the pleasure to see three of my students defending their scientific work.

• Lorenzo Zanga completed his BSc project on unstable spinning black-hole binaries,
• Alessandro Carzaniga defended his MSc thesis on gaussianities in the LISA detector, and
• Alice Spadaro also presented her MSc-thesis work on the LISA mock data challenge. I

t’s so great to see students reaching the point of defending/arguing/explaining their science… I think it’s actually one of the best things about my job! Thank you all for sharing these months with me, I’ll see you around! (And thanks to Viola De Renzis and Riccardo Buscicchio who co-supervised Lorenzo, Alessandro, and Alice with me).

Here we are, from left to right: Alessandro (sorry I cut your face in half!), me trying to be funny, Riccardo, and smiling Alice! (Lorenzo and Viola had left the room earlier…)

My group is hosting quite a few visitors this semester. We’re alive!

• Francesco Iacovelli is visiting us for 7 (!) months from Geneva with a grant from the Istituto Svizzero. Francesco has done some amazing work on forecasting the capabilities of Einstein Telescope.
• Chris Moore, a longstanding collaborator from the University of Birmingham will be here at the end of October
• Clement Bonnerot (now in Copenhagen but about to move to the UK for a faculty job, congrats!) will join us in late November.
• Swetha Baghwat will be visiting Milan from Birmingham in November as well.
• And Lieke van Son, Phd student at Harvard and population-synthesis mastermind, will be here in early December.

Left to right: Giulia, Viola, Michele, Lieke, Costantino, Francesco, Alice, and me

So many new people are joining us this Fall!

• Michele Mancarella is joining us as a postdoc supported by my ERC grant. He’s moving from Geneva (Switzerland) brings with him some new activities on gravitational-wave cosmology, because astronomy was not enough after all 🙂
• Costantino Pacilio is also coming in as a postdoc on my ERC grant. Costantino is a GR tester and is providing the group with some new connections to fundamental physics.
• Giulia Fumagalli is about to start her PhD with us, also supported by the ERC. She’s already done some amazing work with Alberto Sesana and Golam Shaifullah on pulsar timing array. Now ready for new GW adventures! And spoiler alert! There’s another PhD student joining in a few months… More soon!

Welcome everybody, it’s an honor you decided to do science with us! You can read their profiles here. And if you’re also interested in my group, we have multiple openings right now. Consider applying!

Wooo! What an amazing performance by two of my students today, who defended their BSc and MSc degrees!

• Oliver Rossi discussed his BSc project on black holes with large spins completed in collaboration with Viola De Renzis (PhD student in my group).
• Andrea Geminardi presented the results of his MSc thesis. Andrea studied the stochastic gravitational-wave background with myself, Riccardo Buscicchio (postdoc here in Milan), and Arianna Renzini (postdoc at Caltech).

Hope you guys had fun working with us, we certainly did! (and I’m sorry for my pain-in-the-*** comments on your plots…). All the best for what comes next!

Very happy to report that Arianna Renzini (currently a postdoc at Caltech) was awarded a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship from the European Union, to be hosted here with my group. Arianna will bring expertise in modeling the gravitational-wave stochastic background, which is a key target for both current and future experiments. Arianna’s proposal is titled “ Stochastic rewind and fast-forward: calibrating LISA with LIGO’s black holes and stochastic background.” Huge congrats, can’t wait to welcome you here.

We’re having four (!) summer students joining the group this year!

• Diego Padilla Monroy from Florida International University (Miami) will be working with me in Milan supported by the IREU program.
• Derin Sivrioglu from Grinnell College (Iowa) will be working with Daria Gangartd in Milan.
• Sayan Neogi from the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (Pune, India) will be working with Matt Mould in Birmingham.
• Sarah Al Humaikani from Paris (France) will be working with Nathan Steinle in Birmingham.

Welcome all! We look forward to seeing your summer discoveries!

We’re at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) today, for a brainstorming workshop we organized together with the gravity groups at JHU and Penn State. A ton of interesting people, cool science, fun numerics, big black holes, future detectors, and many new exciting projects we all want to start. The idea is to get “a little help from my (gravity) friends”. Have a look at what we’re up to: davidegerosa.com/with-a-little-help-from-my-friends

Huge congrats to my student Cecilia Fabbri who got her Bachelor’s degree today. Cecilia defended (quite brilliantly!) her project titled “Constraining the black-hole irreducible mass with current gravitational-wave data”. Her work ended up in our recent draft (arxiv:2202.08848). Cecilia is continuing with a Master’s degree in astrophysics at Milano-Bicocca, stay tuned for her future successes!

Traveling is (kind of) coming back, and we’re having lots of visitors around, all supported by external research grants (congrats folks, you’re great!):

• Daria Gangardt is visiting Milan from Birmingham for 6 months from January to July, supported by a StudyInItaly research grant from the Italian embassy (thanks Italy!).
• Floor Broekgaarden joins the group from Harvard for 2 months, supported by the HPCEuropa3 program (thanks Europe!).
• Matt Mould will be in Milan in April (again thanks to HPCEuropa3).
• Viola De Renzis instead will be visiting Birmingham in March (once more thanks to HPCEuropa3, such a great program!).
• Nate Steinle will also be in Milan in late April. Wooo!

Safe travel everyone, it’s time we move our group meetings to a larger room.

Nathan Steinle is officially starting his postdoc in the group today! Nate graduated with Mike Kesden at the University of Texas at Dallas and is now working with me and the rest of the Birmingham crowd. Welcome Nate! Hope you enjoy this side of the pond.

Viola De Renzis is the latest addition to our group! Viola graduated from Rome “La Sapienza” with an MSc thesis on exotic compact objects and is now starting her PhD with me at Milano-Bicocca. Viola plays guitar, arguably better than Matt (although he runs for a million miles, and that’s when he’s tired), while Daria remains by far the best fencer in the group. Welcome, we all look forward to working with you!

We moved! I’ve had the opportunity to relocate to Milan, in the north of Italy, very close to where I’m from. I’m now an Associate Professor at the University of Milan-Bicocca, one of the two campuses in the beautiful city of the “Madonnina“. Some of the folks in my group will be visiting Milan very often, and (spoiler alert!) we’re going to have new additions soon. I’m sad to leave the amazing group in Birmingham, but also very excited at this new tremendous opportunity.

Huge congrats to Maciej (Max) Dabrowny, who just graduated from the University of Birmingham after a very successful research project with us (Max’s project ended up in a paper!). Well done and all the best for the future.

We have a new friend in the group! Meredith Vogel is joining us for her undergraduate summer research project. Meredith is e-visiting us from Missouri State University (but will soon start her grad school at the University of Florida (*) ) and will be working with Matt on numerical-relativity surrogate models. Meredith’s project is part of the IREU (International Summer Research) program, which is a great opportunity for US students to visit groups abroad, including us! Welcome Meredith, looking forward to seeing your great science.

(*) That’s the place were I saw a real alligator. On campus!

We are running a virtual workshop with my group (Bham) and Emanuele Berti’s group at Johns Hopkins University (Hop). It’s an attempt to feel a bit less lonely during the COVID pandemic. Hope this is the opportunity to start new projects! And we’re a funny crowd…

For more: davidegerosa.com/hopbham

It’s a great pleasure to welcome Nicola Giacobbo, who starts his postdoc with us today. Nicola completed his PhD and first postdoc year in Padova, and is an expert in population-synthesis simulations, compact binary progenitors, stellar physics, and all those funny things. Welcome Nicola!

I am very happy to welcome Daria Gangardt back in my group. We worked together last summer for a short but successful summer project. Now Daria is starting her PhD. I’m honored we can be part together of the next great discoveries of our field

Congratulations to my Master’s students that graduate this year: **Abdullah Aziz** and Julian Chan from the University of Birmingham, and Beatrice Basset from the University of Lyon. Well done all, and good luck with your future adventures.

Two close collaborators will be visiting my group this winter.

• Vijay Varma, postdoc at Caltech and expert of numerical relativity surrogate models, will be here on October 7-11. Get ready for his talk “Binary black hole simulations: from supercomputers to your laptop” (aka: Everything you ever wanted to know about waveform surrogates).
• Giovanni Rosotti, Veni fellow in Leiden, will be here on November 4-15. He will also give a talk: “The observational era of planet formation“. What do planets have to do with black holes? Turns out some stages of their evolution are set by the same equations. We have a lot to learn from each other! Giovanni’s visit is supported by the GWverse COST Action (thanks EU!).

I am very excited to welcome Matthew Mould in my research group. Matt is starting his Ph.D. with me in Birmingham. We already have too many ideas…

This summer I’ll be working with two undergraduate research students. Luca Reali is finishing his master at my alma mater (University of Milan, Italy) and is visiting Birmingham with a scholarship from the HPC Europa 3 cluster. Daria Gangardt just finished her 3rd year in Birmingham. Their projects concentrate on spin effects in black hole binaries and the properties of merger remnants. Welcome Daria and Luca, hope you’ll have a very rewarding summer!

The COST action GWverse is an impressive network of European researchers and institutions tackling gravitational waves, black holes, etc (i.e. the things I like… sweet!). Together with conferences and outreach, they support collaborative visits between the network members, so here we come. Hey wait a minute, Caltech is kind of far from Europe isn’t it? Here’s the news: Caltech is now an international partner of GWverse, and we’re very happy to host European researchers who want to collaborate with us in sunny southern California.

We’re having our first visitors. Serguei Ossokine from the AEI, is here to work with me on a black-hole binary spin project. Yann Bouffanais from University of Padova (Italy) is coming to collaborate on formation channels. Welcome Serguei and Yann, and thanks to COST for supporting our science!