In 2003 I was admitted to the Dottorato di Ricerca in Fisica in Catania, but decided to transfer to Penn State after about six months. At Penn State, I started studying numerical relativity under the guidance of Bernd Bruegmann, undergoing some introductory training on numerical methods until he left Penn State a year later. I then transferred to Pablo Laguna and Deirdre Shoemaker's group, where I have worked on several projects regarding binary black hole systems. My doctoral thesis focused on the transition from the nonlinear merger regime in a binary collision to the final perturbed black hole which obeys the laws of linear perturbation theory.
During my doctoral studies, I also became interested with the possibility of a computationally focused project in loop quantum cosmology, and started a collaboration with Parampreet Singh first, and then with Tomasz Pawlowski in order to develop a set of numerical tools for the construction of physical initial data and their evolution across the singularity, which we applied to the study of the early universe dynamics for models with a nonzero cosmological constant. Also in this period I enrolled for the Penn State High Performance Computing minor, which has provided me with invaluable hands-on experience in a variety of topics, ranging from high-end visualization tools to evolutionary computation to pervasive systems.
After graduation in 2008, I became a postdoctoral researcher in Numerical Relativity, under Erik Schnetter's supervision, at the Center for Computation and Technology, a research unit of Louisiana State University. There I concentrated on the development of Cactus tools for Alpaca (Cactus Tools for Application Level Performance and Correctness Analysis), and their application to the physics of black hole mergers, including their horizons, their asymptotic properties and the emitted gravitational radiation.
In 2010 I moved to Germany, where I worked as a postdoctoral scientist, funded by a Marie Curie Reintegration Grant, at the Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik in Potsdam, Germany, where I was the leading researcher of project COSMOTOOLKIT, which aimed at extending the Einstein Toolkit to cosmology. This work lead to the first numerical simulation of a black-hole lattice, and to the development of a generic, parallel, multigrid elliptic solver based on the Cactus framework.
Whilst in Berlin, I also founded Wissenswerkstatt Berlin, a science education and outreach company aimed at bringing people of all ages closer to academic research. Wissenswerkstatt Berlin was selected to be part of the startup navigator of the Brandenburgisches Institut für Existenzgründung und Mittelstandsförderung (BIEM), and was nominated for the degewo Gründer Preis in 2013.
In 2014 I was selected as a Rita Levi Montalcini fellow, receiving a tenure-track position and a research fund to move back to my home town, Catania, where I currently work in the local university's Department of Physics and Astronomy.
For more detail about my education and research experience, you can take a look at my curriculum vitae or browse the links below for a collection of past projects, oral presentations and posters.
Universita' di Catania (Italia): Senior researcher (tenure track, 2014-present):
Talks
Posters
Publications
Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik (Germany): Marie Curie Fellow and Postdoctoral researcher (2010-2013):
Talks
Posters
Publications
Center for Computation and Technology at LSU (U.S.A.): Postdoctoral researcher (2008-2010):
Talks
Posters
Publications
Pennsylvania State University (U.S.A.): Ph.D. in Physics, Minor in High Performance Computing (2003-2008):
Talks
Posters
Projects
Publications
Universita' di Catania (Italia): Dottorato di Ricerca in Fisica, XVIII ciclo (2002-2003):
Talks
Publications
Universita' di Catania (Italia): Laurea in Fisica, indirizzo teorico generale (1996-2002):
Talks
Projects