Alessandra Buonanno is an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

naturalized-American theoretical physicist and director at the

Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) is a Max Planck Institute whose research is aimed at investigating Einstein's theory of relativity and beyond: Mathematics, quantum gravity, astrophysical relativity, a ...

(Albert Einstein Institute) in

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream o ...

. She is the head of the "Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity" department. She holds a research professorship at the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

, and honorary professorships at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the University of Potsdam. She is a leading member of the

LIGO Scientific Collaboration The LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) is a scientific collaboration of international physics institutes and research groups dedicated to the search for gravitational waves. History The LSC was established in 1997, under the leadership of Barry ...

, which observed gravitational waves from a binary black-hole merger in 2015.

Early life and education

Buonanno earned her MSc in 1993, and she completed her PhD in theoretical physics at the

University of Pisa The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. History The Origins The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...

in 1996. After a brief period spent at the theory division of CERN, she held a postdoctoral position at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) in France and the R.C. Tolman Prize Fellowship at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

Career and research

Buonanno became a permanent researcher (Chargée de 1ere classe, CR1) in 2001 at the

Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris The Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (translated: Paris Institute of Astrophysics) is a research institute in Paris, France. The Institute is part of the Sorbonne University and is associated with the CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifi ...

(IAP) and then at the

Astroparticle and Cosmology Laboratory The Astroparticle and Cosmology (APC) laboratory in Paris gathers researchers (experimentalists, theorists and observers) working in different areas including high-energy astrophysics, cosmology, gravitation, and neutrino physics. The institut ...

(APC) in Paris with the

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

(CNRS) before joining the University of Maryland as a physics professor in 2005. She moved to the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in 2014. Buonanno was a Kavli Fellow at the Kavli Frontiers of Science Japanese-American Symposium of the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. She was the William and Flora Hewlett Fellow at the

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, from 2011 to 2012. She was a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the

Perimeter Institute Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI, Perimeter, PITP) is an independent research centre in foundational theoretical physics located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1999. The institute's founding and major benefactor i ...

from 2014 to 2020. Buonanno's work with Thibault Damour of reducing the two-body problem in general relativity to an effective one-body formalism, and her research at the intersection of analytical-relativity modeling and

numerical relativity Numerical relativity is one of the branches of general relativity that uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems. To this end, supercomputers are often employed to study black holes, gravitational waves, neutron stars a ...

simulations were employed to observe

gravitational waves Gravitational waves are waves of the intensity of gravity generated by the accelerated masses of an orbital binary system that propagate as waves outward from their source at the speed of light. They were first proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1 ...

from merging binary black holes for the first time, and infer their astrophysical and cosmological properties. Beyond her core expertise in modeling gravitational waves from compact-object binary systems, Buonanno, in collaboration with Yanbei Chen, computed the quantum-optical noise in the advanced-

LIGO The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. Two large ...

gravitational-wave detectors, and showed that quantum correlations between photon shot noise and radiation-pressure noise (i.e., the optical-spring effect) can circumvent constraints imposed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in those detectors.

Awards and honors

* 2022: Tomalla Prize for her “outstanding work on gravitational-wave physics” * 2021: Balzan Prize in the subject area "Gravitation: physical and astrophysical aspects" (shared with Thibault Damour) *2021:

Dirac Medal The Dirac Medal is the name of four awards in the field of theoretical physics, computational chemistry, and mathematics, awarded by different organizations, named in honour of Professor Paul Dirac, one of the great theoretical physicists of the 20 ...

and Prize of the

Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is an international research institute for physical and mathematical sciences that operates under a tripartite agreement between the Italian Government, United Nations Education ...

(ICTP) (shared with T. Damour, F. Pretorious and S. Teukolsky) * 2021: Elected Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences *2021: Elected Member of the

German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded ...

*2021: Elected Member of the

Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (german: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the German states of Berlin a ...

*2021: Galileo Galilei Medal of the

Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare The Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN; "National Institute for Nuclear Physics") is the coordinating institution for nuclear, particle, theoretical and astroparticle physics in Italy. History INFN was founded on 8 August 1951, to furth ...

(INFN) (shared with T. Damour and F. Pretorious) *2019: 8th Benjamin Lee Professorship, Asian Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics, South Korea * 2018: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...

(DFG) * 2016: Lower Saxony State Prize (shared with Bruce Allen and Karsten Danzmann) * 2011: Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) * 2010: Elected Fellow of the

International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation The International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG) is a learned society established in 1971 with the goal to promote research on general relativity (GR) and gravitation. To that end, it encourages communication between relativi ...

(ISGRG) * 2007: Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, University of Maryland, College Park * 2006–2008: Alfred P.

Sloan Research Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

* 2000: Italian Society of General Relativity and Gravitational Physics (SIGRAV) Prize

Awards as member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration

* 2017: Group Achievement Award of the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NG ...

(shared with the LIGO Scientific Collaboration) * 2017: Einstein Medal of the Einstein Society in Bern, Switzerland (shared with the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration) * 2017:

Princess of Asturias Award The Princess of Asturias Awards ( es, Premios Princesa de Asturias, links=no, ast, Premios Princesa d'Asturies, links=no), formerly the Prince of Asturias Awards from 1981 to 2014 ( es, Premios Príncipe de Asturias, links=no), are a series of a ...

for Technical and Scientific Research to R. Drever, K. Thorne and R. Weiss, and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration * 2017: HEAD

Bruno Rossi Prize The Bruno Rossi Prize is awarded annually by the High Energy Astrophysics division of the American Astronomical Society "for a significant contribution to High Energy Astrophysics, with particular emphasis on recent, original work". Named after as ...

of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) to G. Gonzalez and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration * 2016: Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics to R. Drever, K. Thorne and R. Weiss, and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration * 2016: Gruber Cosmology Prize to R. Drever, K. Thorne and R. Weiss, and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration

References

External links