Invited Speakers

Rennan Barkana

Tel Aviv University, Israel

Professor Rennan Barkana studies the formation and evolution of the first stars. He constructs models in order to predict the properties of the galaxies in which the first stars formed, and studies ways to probe them, especially via radio-wave radiation from hydrogen atoms at a wavelength of 21 cm. In 2018 Barkana showed that an observation of radio waves from the early Universe implies that the dark matter may have cooled the early cosmic gas. If confirmed by further measurements, this will be a milestone in physics, the first direct detection of the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the matter in the Universe. After graduating Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Physics and Math, Barkana got his Ph.D. in Physics at age 23 from MIT. Following a postdoctoral stint at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton plus a year in Canada, he assumed a faculty position at Tel Aviv University, Israel, where he is Professor and Head of the Department of Astrophysics. Barkana has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Moore Distinguished Scholar at Caltech, and a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Oxford.

Ulisses Barres de Almeida

CBPF, Brazil

Ulisses Barres de Almeida holds a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Durham (UK), and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, between 2011-12. He is currently an Associate Researcher at the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF) working on extragalactic gamma-ray astrophysics. He is a faculty member for the IRAP-PhD international doctoral program on Relativistic Astrophysics and an Affiliated Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC). Ulisses Barres participates in the MAGIC collaboration and is a Brazilian representative on the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Consortium Board, where he currently serves as Multi-Band and Multi-Messenger Task-Force Coordinator. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Open Universe Initiative, under the direction of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), in Viena. In 2014 he was elected Fellow of the Durham Institute for Advanced Studies (UK) and since 2016 he is a FAPERJ Young Scientist Fellow. In 2017, Dr. Barres received the Young Astronomer Award from the Brazilian Astronomical Society (SAB), and in 2019, was recipient of a Serrapilheira Grant.

Vincent Bourier

University of Geneva, Switzerland

Vincent Bourrier obtained in 2011 a Masters degree in Astrophysics, Space Sciences & Planetology (Paul Sabatier University), and an engineering degree in Space Sciences & Techniques (Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace – SUPAERO). His doctoral research, carried out from 2011-2014 at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, focused on the observation and modeling of atmospheric escape from exoplanets and the study of their orbital architectures, as a way to determine how exoplanets can come to orbit extremely close to their star and how they evolve in such extreme conditions. His work led to the detections of giant exospheres around Neptune-size exoplanets, and pioneered the measurement of orbital architectures around cool stars. Vincent Bourrier is now a Research and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Astronomy of the University of Geneva, where he combines his two research interests to understand the interplay between the atmospheric and orbital evolution of exoplanets.

Astrid Eichhorn

Heidelberg University, Germany

Astrid Eichhorn did her PhD on aspects of quantum gravity as well as Yang-Mills theory with Holger Gies at the University of Jena in 2011. She held postdoc positions at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, where she is now a visiting fellow, and at Imperial College, London. In 2016, an Emmy-Noether grant of the German Research Foundation enabled her to establish a research group in quantum gravity at Heidelberg University. She is a member of the German Young Academy since 2018. Since early 2019, she is Associate Professor at CP3-Origins at the University of Southern Denmark. She focuses on several approaches to quantum gravity, the interplay of quantum gravity with matter, and questions of particle physics.

Elena Gallo

University of Michigan, USA

Juan García-Bellido

UAM, Spain

Juan García-Bellido is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, and researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the CSIC. Author of more than three hundred articles in specialized journals, he is an internationally recognized theoretical cosmologist. He has worked at CERN, Imperial College London and Stanford University. His investigations cover a wide range of phenomena, from the origin of the universe in terms of cosmological inflation theory, to gravitational waves, the formation of galaxies and the nature of dark matter and dark energy. He is a lover of music and oil painting. He is married and has two children.

Tanja Hinderer

University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

Raphael Hirschi

Keele University, UK

Martin Lemoine

IAP, CNRS – Sorbonne Université, France

Martin Lemoine obtained his PhD in 1995 then spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago before joining the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), where he now is a “senior scientist” working at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris (IAP, CNRS – Sorbonne Université). Martin Lemoine has also served as Associate Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique between 2002 and 2016, and as Deputy director of IAP between 2005 and 2009.

Martin Lemoine is a theorist, whose research activities have covered various themes of cosmology, astroparticle physics, mullti-messenger and high-energy astrophysics. One of his main themes of interest concerns the origin and the nature of very high energy cosmic rays. Martin Lemoine has specialized in the physics of particle transport in magnetized turbulence, on the physics of acceleration through Fermi-type processes in relativistic outflows, and most notably on the physics of relativistic collisionless shock waves.

Antony Lewis

University of Sussex, UK

Antony Lewis obtained an MSci in Physics from the Cambridge in 1997, and went on to do a PhD in the Cavendish on Geometric Algebra and covariant methods in physics and cosmology. In 2000 he started a postdoc at DAMTP in Cambridge, before  moving to CITA (Toronto) in 2002 for three years, with a 4-month spell in the Center for Astrophysics (Harvard). In 2005 Antony returned to the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge on an STFC Advanced Fellowship. He moved to Sussex at the start of 2010. He is a member of the Planck and Simons Observatory collaborations, and an expert on the cosmic microwave background, gravitational lensing and the theory of observations.

Giovanni Losurdo

INFN Pisa, Italy

Raffaella Margutti

Northwestern University, USA

Raffaella Margutti is an assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University and member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). She held postdoctoral appointments at Harvard University (ITC-CfA) and New York University.
Her research specifically focuses on the biggest explosions, disruptions and mergers that occur in our Universe: Supernovae, Gamma-Ray Bursts, tidal disruption events and neutron star mergers. Margutti investigates the physics of these events by combining broad-band observations across the electromagnetic spectrum, including X-ray, UV, optical, IR, and radio. The primary goal of her research is to understand the nature of the physical processes that regulate such dramatic displays.

Dany Page

National Autonomous University, Mexico

Dimitrios Psaltis

University of Arizona, USA

Chris Reynolds

Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK

Professor Christopher Reynolds is the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge.  He has broad interests in observational and theoretical high energy astrophysics, with much of his current work focusing on the astrophysics of black holes, specifically the physics of black hole accretion, observational signatures of strong gravity close to black holes, and black hole feedback on galaxy evolution. He received his PhD from Cambridge in 1996 and then, following a postdoctoral position and a Hubble Fellowship at the University of Colorado Boulder, joined the professorial faculty of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Maryland (UMd) in 2001.  During his time in Maryland he was closely involved with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and was the Founding Director of the UMd-GSFC Joint Space Science Institute (JSI).  He returned to Cambridge in 2017 to take up his current Chair, and has served as Deputy Director of the Institute of Astronomy since 2018.

Luciano Rezzolla

ITP, Frankfurt, Germany

Born in Milan, Luciano Rezzolla is Chair of Theoretical Astrophysics and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP) in Frankfurt. He has studied Physics in Bari and Trieste and received a PhD in Astrophysics at the School International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste, in 1997.  In 2013, and together with his colleagues Heino Falcke and Michael Kramer, his research was awarded an ERC Synergy Grant of €14million by the European Research Council. In 2017 he received the Karl Schwarzschild Prize from the Walter Greiner Foundation for his studies on black holes and neutron stars and in 2019 was nominated for the Andrews Professorship in Astronomy, the most prestigious position at Trinity College of Dublin. His research focuses on the physics and astrophysics of compact objects, such as black holes and neutron stars, which he studies employing numerical simulations performed on supercomputers. Together with his collaborators, he has developed some of the most sophisticated numerical-relativity codes with which he explores the properties of compact objects. Together with Olindo Zanotti he is the author of a well-known book on hydrodynamics relativistic.

Claudia de Rham

Imperial College London, UK

Claudia de Rham is a Professor of theoretical Physics at Imperial College London. Her expertise lies at the interface between Gravity, Cosmology and Particle Physics where she develops and tests new models and paradigms. Recently she has been interested in understanding the origin of the late-time acceleration of the Universe and tackling the cosmological constant problem in effective field theories of gravity. She is also studies how low-energy effective field theories can be realized within standard high energy completions and the implications for cosmology and particle physics. Prior being a professor at Imperial College, Claudia was an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University and an assistant professor at Geneva University. She acts as PI on various research grants and has received numerous prizes including an Adams prize for contributions to Mathematics and was a finalist in physical sciences and engineering the inaugural Blavatnik awards in the UK.

Elisa Resconi

Technical University, Munich, Germany

The neutrino physicist Elisa Resconi is Liesel Beckmann distinguished professor at Technical University of Munich. Resconi’s research focuses on neutrinos that have travelled for billions of years through galaxies, stars and planets. The analysis of these particles thus offers a completely new look at elementary forces and structures of the universe. The researchers use the neutrino telescope IceCube at the South Pole to detect the particles in order to learn more about their origins. In 2017, Resconi was among the collaboration to have first ever successfully identify a blazar four billion lightyears away as source of cosmic neutrinos. Elisa Resconi studied at the Università degli Studi di Milano in Milan and in Genoa. After completing her doctoral studies on solar neutrinos at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, she came to Germany on a Marie-Curie scholarship. From 2005 until 2010 she led an Emmy Noether junior research group at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. In 2012 she was appointed to the Professorship for Experimental Physics with Cosmic Particles at TUM, which she helds as a Full Professor since 2019. 

Elena Maria Rossi

Leiden University, Netherlands

Dr Elena Maria Rossi received her PhD in 2005 from Cambridge University, UK. With her thesis, she introduced the so-called “structured” jet, where the energy decreases away from the jet spine. This is now the leading model for the observed jet from the LIGO/VIRGO double neutron star merger event. From 2005 to 2009 she was a Chandra Fellow at the University of Boulder, USA where she focused on formation of supermassive black holes, and co-proposed the “quasi-star” model, where massive black holes may form in the era of the first galaxies. Next, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Hebrew University, where she also worked on tidal disruption events (TDE), white dwarf tidal interaction and Galactic Centre stellar dynamics. Her publications cover predictions for the multi-wavelength light curve of TDEs, the electromagnetic signature following two merging supermassive black holes and the dynamics of hypervelocity stars. In 2011 she joined Leiden University and she is now associate professor. Recently, she has proposed the combined used of optical and gravitational waves for studies of the Local Group. She has been working on LISA related science since 2005 and in 2019 she was appointed LISA science group deputy team leader within the LISA consortium. She is also chairing of the LISA consortium Diversity and Inclusion committee.

Joseph Silk

IAP, France

Joe Silk is an Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society (elected May 1999). He held the Savilian Chair of Astronomy at the University of Oxford from 1999 to 2011. He was awarded the 2011 Balzan Prize for his works on the early Universe. Silk has given more than two hundred invited conference lectures, primarily on galaxy formation and cosmology. He is currently Professor of Physics at the Institut d’astrophysique de Paris, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Homewood Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University (since in 2010), and Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College from 2015 to 2019.

Takahiro Tanaka

Kyoto University, Japan

Takahiro Tanaka, is a professor at Kyoto University, whose current research focusses on topics following from from the recent detection of gravitational waves. He is the principal investigator of an innovative area grant “Gravitational wave physics and astronomy: Genesis”. His fields of interest include inflationary cosmology, gravitational radiation reaction and modified gravity theories.

Tom Giblin

Kenyon College, Ohio, USA

Tom Giblin is an Associate Professor of Physics and Chair of the Department of Physics at Kenyon College and holds an adjunct appointment at Case Western Reserve University.  He is a theoretical and computational particle cosmologist who specializes in using numerical techniques to study nonlinear physics at the interface of particle physics and gravity.  Recently, he has focused on studying the role that numerical relativity can play in understanding inhomogeneous gravity and the consequences this can have on current and future observational probes.  Prior to his time at Kenyon, Tom received his PhD at Yale University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Perimeter Institute

Elisabeth Krause

University of Arizona, USA

Elisabeth Krause is an assistant professor in the department of physics and the department of astronomy at the University of Arizona. She received her Diplom in physics from the University of Bonn in 2007, and her PhD in astrophysics from Caltech in 2012. After postdoc positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, and JPL/Caltech, she joined the faculty at the University of Arizona in 2018. Dr. Krause’s research combines theoretical cosmology and data analysis, with focus on interpreting measurements from large galaxy surveys. She pioneered joint cosmological analysis techniques that combine highly correlated tracers of the universe’s large scale structure and has held several leadership positions in cosmology survey collaborations. She currently co-chairs the science committee of the Dark Energy Survey. Her honors and awards include a Department of Energy Early Career Award in 2019, and the 2020 Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award of the American Physical Society.