Not sure what happened here, how the hell did I end up writing a paper with actual radio data that needed to be reduced… Call me an ambulance. The guy here is 3C186 which is not a postcode but a … Continue reading
February 16, 2024
Author Archives: Davide
January 23, 2024
Tenured professorship in Astrophysics at the University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
The University of Milano-Bicocca (Milan, Italy) will be opening a tenured professorship in astrophysics, with a focus on gravitational-wave data analysis and exploitation. With this notice, we invite expressions of interest from potential candidates. Milano-Bicocca hosts a large group in … Continue reading
January 17, 2024
In memory of Chris Belczynski
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, … Continue reading
December 31, 2023
2023 Wrapped!
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 … Continue reading
November 22, 2023
Calibrating signal-to-noise ratio detection thresholds using gravitational-wave catalogs
In the gravitational-wave world, we usually say a binary merger is detected if it has a sufficiently large SNR (signal-to-noise ratio). But is that true? Detection pipelines are far more complicated than that. Here we try to figure out a … Continue reading
November 21, 2023
Starting a new class! “Scientific computing” for PhD students
I’m teaching the first lecture of a new class today. This is “Scientific computing with Python,” a 16h module for PhD students. To the (many) PhD students who signed up: thanks for your interest, hope you’ll like this. BTW the … Continue reading
November 20, 2023
November graduations: 4 Bsc projects with us
We had another graduation session in November, and a whopping 4 people graduated with research projects in our group. Here are the new BSc physicists who just defended: Congrats all (and twice congrats to Marco and Serena, who graduated with … Continue reading
November 17, 2023
Top 2% scientists
Looks like my name is on a list of the 2% top scientists worldwide. Take these rankings with a grain (or a block) of salt… but this is kind of cool! The list was compiled by Stanford University and bounced … Continue reading
November 3, 2023
Waveform modelling for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
This is the latest of the amazing reviews coming out on the LISA space mission. Short post to say that the LISA signal modeling is challenging but so fascinating. Everything you ever wanted to know it’s in here. Niaesh Afshordi, … Continue reading
October 31, 2023
Spin-eccentricity interplay in merging binary black holes
I’m obsessed with spinning black-hole binaries but, guys, spinning and eccentric black holes are even better! This is the first first-author paper by Giulia, who is not only a rising GW astronomer but also a semi-professional baker… So take two … Continue reading
October 28, 2023
2 Masters + 2 Undegrads
We’ve had four amazing research students graduating with us in October! After the Master’s defenses, students turned the graduation party into a football supporter thing, with chants and all the rest!
October 14, 2023
Arianna on a national newspaper
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 … Continue reading
October 11, 2023
Catalog variance of testing general relativity with gravitational-wave data
…and we’re back to testing GR. We’ve got many gravitational-wave events and would like to use them all together to figure out if our equations for gravity are correct. And here is the issue: there’s only one set (aka catalog) … Continue reading
October 6, 2023
More people, more topics, more fun
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 🙂 We’re soon going to have Giulia Capurri who will be visiting us for … Continue reading
September 20, 2023
Students going for 3G, ringdowns, and selection effects
Three of our BSc students graduated today. And, last but not least, let me add Simone Piscitelli, who last week defended his MSc degree at Milano Statale (“the other” University of Milan) supervised by Costantino Pacilio and myself. Simone worked … Continue reading
September 17, 2023
Postdoc positions in gravitational-wave astronomy at Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
The University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy) invites expressions of interest for postdoctoral positions in gravitational-wave astronomy. Successful candidates will join the group of Prof. Davide Gerosa and will be part of the “GWmining” project funded by the European Research Council, with … Continue reading
August 28, 2023
Black-hole mergers in disk-like environments could explain the observed 𝑞−𝜒eff correlation
Gravitational-wave data keep on giving us surprises. The most outstanding one IMO is an observed correlation between mass ratios and spins of the black holes, which was first found by Tom Callister and friends. That is so, so weird… to … Continue reading
July 19, 2023
New July physicists
Two students just completed their Bachelor’s degree with research projects in our group. 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: … Continue reading
July 17, 2023
gwpopnext was a blast!
Last week my group and I hosted the international workshop “Gravitational-wave populations: what’s next?.” It’s been a blast! An unconventional conference, with almost zero talks and the vast majority of the time dedicated to discussions. I report the program here … Continue reading
July 10, 2023
Extending black-hole remnant surrogate models to extreme mass ratios
New paper from a new student! Here is Matteo Boschini’s first piece of work, where we look at predictions for the final mass and spins of black-hole remnants. That is, after two black hole merge, what’s the mass and spin … Continue reading
June 21, 2023
Phd position at Milano-Bicocca under the Italian National PhD program in Space Science and Technology
The University of Milano-Bicocca (Milan, Italy) will be hiring a PhD student under the Italian National PhD program in Space Science and Technology. Candidates with interests in gravitational-wave astronomy, data analysis, and multi-messenger applications are encouraged to apply. For information … Continue reading
June 19, 2023
Masterclass in big data within science and industry
The advanced class “Big data within science and industry” will take place on September 22nd at the University of Milano-Bicocca (Milan, Italy). https://sites.google.com/unimib.it/bigdatamasterclass Data are everywhere. Exploring scientific data is now at the heart of both scientific advances as well as industrial applications. This one-day … Continue reading
June 8, 2023
Dr. Matt!
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 … Continue reading
June 7, 2023
Glitch systematics on the observation of massive black-hole binaries with LISA
All right, this is kind of far from my day-to-day topics but working on this paper with Alice and Riccardo was super fun. Think LISA and supermassive binary black holes. And… the detector does what it wants. That’s not true … Continue reading
June 6, 2023
Let’s PRIN!
Happy to report we got a grant from the Italian PRIN program! This is in collaboration with Andrea Maselli from GSSI in L’Aquila. The title is “Gravitational-wave astronomy as a mature field: characterizing selection biases and environmental effects”. Stay tuned … Continue reading
June 3, 2023
IREU summer time
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 … Continue reading
May 30, 2023
One to many: comparing single gravitational-wave events to astrophysical populations
We do population analysis in gravitational waves all the time now. That is: we compare many observations from GW experiments against many simulated datapoints from simulations. But what if you only have one observation? That could be a LIGO guy … Continue reading
May 17, 2023
QLUSTER: quick clusters of merging binary black holes
We’ve got the best name ever for a numerical code! Let me introduce QLUSTER which, guess what, simulates clusters. We finally put out a piece of code that was originally developed in 2019 and later used in several papers. It’s … Continue reading
April 27, 2023
Parameter estimation of binary black holes in the endpoint of the up-down instability
This paper is episode four in the up-down instability series. We first figured out the instability exists (episode 1), then computed when binaries go after the instability (i.e. the endpoint, episode 2), and also checked binaries are really unstable in … Continue reading
April 12, 2023
Efficient multi-timescale dynamics of precessing black-hole binaries
It’s out! The notorious (ask my students…) “precession v2” paper is finally out! This took a veeeery long time; we checked and the first commit for this paper is from May 2020 (!). But the result is an exhilarating tour … Continue reading
March 29, 2023
Inferring, not just detecting: metrics for high-redshift sources observed with third-generation gravitational-wave detectors
Third-generation gravitational wave detectors are going to see all stellar-mass black-hole mergers in the Universe. Wooooooooo. But hang on, is this enough? Observing the sources is great, but then we need to measure them. Here we try to focus on … Continue reading
March 23, 2023
PhD positions in gravitational-wave astronomy at Milano-Bicocca
The University of Milano-Bicocca welcomes applications for PhD scholarships. The application deadline is April 19th, 2023 for positions starting in the Fall of 2023: https://en.unimib.it/education/postgraduates/doctoral-research-phd-programmes/applying-doctorate/calls-application In particular, the theoretical astrophysics group is looking for highly motivated candidates to join our … Continue reading
March 22, 2023
Spring graduations!
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 … Continue reading
February 28, 2023
Astrostats is back
I’m about to start teaching this year’s edition of “Astrostatistics and Machine Learning” for the MSc degree in Astrophysics here at Milano-Bicocca. The material is available at github.com/dgerosa/astrostatistics_bicocca_2023 Feel free to have a look if you fancy some stats… and … Continue reading
February 27, 2023
We should learn from our students: LISA and beyond
The student reps of our department (codename: redshift) have organized a stellar event today. Curiosity and interest in the LISA space mission brought them to design a full day of talks from leading experts in the field. They put Stefano … Continue reading
January 12, 2023
Gravitational-wave populations: what’s next?
It is a pleasure to announce the workshop “Gravitational-wave populations: what’s next?” which we are currently organizing for next summer: https://sites.google.com/unimib.it/gwpopnext As the catalog of detected gravitational-wave events grows from O(10) to O(100) sources (but think millions in a few … Continue reading
January 1, 2023
New year, new friend
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 … Continue reading
November 21, 2022
Two more graduations today!
Huge congrats to two of my students who graduated today! Matteo Muriano completed a funny BSc project on black-hole merger trees. And Giovanni Cavallotto went all in for his MSc research: he basically “fixed” black-hole binary spin precession at 2PN! … Continue reading
November 15, 2022
Eccentricity or spin precession? Distinguishing subdominant effects in gravitational-wave data
We want more! With gravitational-wave data, some quantities like the masses of the black holes are much easier to see than others. But those others are very interesting, notably spins that process and orbits that are eccentric, because they would … Continue reading
November 2, 2022
The Bardeen-Petterson effect, disk breaking, and the spin orientations of supermassive black-hole binaries
Together with my postdoc Nate, we’re proceeding our investigations on supermassive, spinning binary black holes surrounded by accretion disks (that is: a ton of gas around big monsters at the center of galaxies!). In today’s paper, we dig a bit … Continue reading
October 25, 2022
Here are the new gravitational wave astronomers!
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, … Continue reading
October 13, 2022
Late 2022 visitors: we’re alive!
My group is hosting quite a few visitors this semester. We’re alive!
October 12, 2022
The group gets larger
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 … Continue reading
September 29, 2022
Postdoctoral fellowships in gravitational-wave astronomy at Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
The University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy) invites expressions of interest for postdoctoral positions in gravitational-wave astronomy. Successful candidates will join the group of Prof. Davide Gerosa and will be part of the “GWmining” project funded by the European Research Council. Targeted … Continue reading
September 21, 2022
Andrea and Oliver are the new black-hole experts in town!
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 … Continue reading
September 19, 2022
Job opportunities for Marie Curie past holders and applicants
The Italian government has pushed a hiring program dedicated to holders and applicants of Marie Curie Fellowships from the EU. The call targets those that have either (i) completed a successful Marie Curie Fellowship in the past 4 years or … Continue reading
August 30, 2022
Italy has a brand new Center for Supercomputing (ICSC)… and we’re on it!
The Italian government is pushing a major inverstment program in High-Performance Computing, and we’re part of it! The new ICSC (Italian Center for Supercomputing) will manage >300M Euros going towards early-career researchers, PhD scholarships, and computing infrastructure. The University of … Continue reading
July 4, 2022
Characterization of merging black holes with two precessing spins
Lots of “firsts” today! My first-year PhD student Viola just put out her first first-author paper. This is about measuring black holes with not one, but two precessing spins. People have been trying to figure out how to tell if … Continue reading
June 3, 2022
Super Arianna!
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, … Continue reading
June 1, 2022
New summer means new summer projects
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 … Continue reading