Astrophysicist · University of Milano-Bicocca
I am a full professor in the Department of Physics, and I study how galaxies evolve and form stars by exchanging gas with their surroundings.
My research focuses on galaxy evolution across cosmic time. I am interested in the physics of the diffuse gas around galaxies — how it flows in, how it is expelled, and how it connects galaxies to the cosmic web. I aim to understand how the continuous gas exchange across various structures in the Universe shapes the evolutionary paths of galaxies. Recently, I have developed an interest in education, particularly on the impact of new technology in learning STEM disciplines.
142 hours with MUSE reveal a 700-kiloparsec filament of glowing hydrogen linking two quasars at z ≈ 3.22 — the structure cold dark matter has always predicted, imaged in enough detail to measure.
A five-megaparsec stretch of filament at z ≈ 4, threaded through nineteen ordinary galaxies and no quasars at all — which says the glow is set by the gas itself, not by whatever happens to be shining on it.
Matching hundreds of metal absorbers against the galaxies near them, across the MAGG survey, resolves into a three-part picture: a galaxy's own halo, the filaments running between galaxies, and a thin enriched medium far from anything.
