Rosalba Perna is an Italian and American theoretical astrophysicist whose research concerns high-energy cosmic sources including

gamma-ray burst In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Bursts can last from ten millise ...

s and

neutron star merger A neutron star merger is a type of stellar collision. It occurs in a fashion similar to the rare brand of type Ia supernovae resulting from merging white dwarf stars. When two neutron stars orbit each other closely, they gradually spiral i ...

s. She has also studied exoplanets and the growth of

supermassive black hole A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical ob ...

s. She is professor of physics and astronomy at Stony Brook University.

Education and career

Perna earned a

laurea In Italy, the ''laurea'' is the main post-secondary academic degree. The name originally referred literally to the laurel wreath, since ancient times a sign of honor and now worn by Italian students right after their official graduation ceremony ...

at the

University of Salerno The University of Salerno ( it, Università degli Studi di Salerno, UNISA) is a university located in Fisciano and in Baronissi, Italy. Its main campus is located in Fisciano while the Faculty of Medicine is located in Baronissi. It is organize ...

in 1993, with a thesis concerning the

quantum Hall effect The quantum Hall effect (or integer quantum Hall effect) is a quantized version of the Hall effect which is observed in two-dimensional electron systems subjected to low temperatures and strong magnetic fields, in which the Hall resistance exh ...

. In the same year, she also earned a diploma in music, as a piano player, at the Conservatory of Music Carlo Gesualdo Da Venosa in Potenza. She completed a Ph.D. in physics at

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 ...

in 1999, with the dissertation ''Theoretical studies of Gamma-Ray Bursts'' supervised by

Avi Loeb Abraham "Avi" Loeb ( he, אברהם (אבי) לייב; born February 26, 1962) is an Israeli-American theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology. Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. He h ...

. She continued at Harvard as a

Harvard Junior Fellow The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...

from 1999 to 2003. She did continued postdoctoral research at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

as a Lyman Spitzer Fellow and then, in 2004, became an assistant professor of astrophysics at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sy ...

. After earning tenure there in 2011, she moved to Stony Brook University in 2014, and became a full professor at Stony Brook in 2017.

Recognition

Perna won the SIGRAV Prize of the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation in 2010. In 2014 she was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), after a nomination from the APS Division of Astrophysics, "for her pioneering contributions to our understanding of the long and short gamma-ray bursts, including the development of advanced models to describe their properties and environments, calculations of their particle and radiative emission, and innovative treatment of the time-dependent photoinization in the dusty environment around the bursts".

References

External links

Home page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Perna, Rosalba Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American astrophysicists American women astronomers American women physicists Italian astrophysicists Italian women physicists University of Salerno alumni Harvard University alumni University of Colorado Boulder faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society