I was born in Torre del Greco and grew up in Ercolano, two beautiful towns lying at the western foot of Mount Vesuvius, on the Bay of Naples, Italy. You may have heard of them since the first is famous for the production of coral jewellery and cameo brooches, and the second for the archeological site and the wine known as Lacryma Christi.
I owe my passion for Physics, Astronomy and science in general mainly to my father and to his dedication to letting me experiment, make me curious and observe the night sky since I was a child...and of course to Margherita Hack.
I obtained my Bachelor in Physics at University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy) with a thesis on the presence of the intracluster light in the Virgo Cluster as a probe to understand the role that accretion events play in the evolution of galaxies in galaxy clusters in which it is detected. During my Bachelor I have been involved in a scientific collaboration with the Sternberg Astronomical Institute of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russian Federation) that evolved in my Master thesis. I worked on two main methods of the cosmic strings observational search: the analysis of anisotropy of the CMB radiation and the analysis of strong gravitational lensing effects of remote sources by a cosmic string. After finishing my master studies, I spent one year at the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples carrying on the analysis of ultra compact massive galaxies (UCMG) candidates selected in the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS). As an aside project, I am continuing to work on this topic. For my Ph.D. at the Argelander-Institut für Astronomie at Bonn University (Germany), I joined Prof. Dr. Schneider’s research group in close collaboration with Dr. Tim Schrabback where I am now working on the scientific preparation of the ESA’s space probe Euclid, in particular the development of techniques for weak lensing galaxy shape measurements that require careful correction for instrumental distortions such as the image point-spread function (PSF), exploiting the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archive as training sample for weak lensing shape measurements. I am member of the Euclid Consortium and of the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IMPRS) doctorate school. A more detailed description about my research and work you can find under RESEARCH INTERESTS and you can download my CV here .
Besides my research, I love cooking, fashion and strolling around looking for new places.
For questions, advising and speaking engagements, send a query using my CONTACT info.