Stefano Vitale (born

1951 Events January * January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950). * January 9 – The Government of the United ...

, Naples, Italy) is an Italian physicist and a retired professor of

experimental physics Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and ...

at the

University of Trento The University of Trento (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Trento'') is an Italian university located in Trento and nearby Rovereto. It has been able to achieve considerable results in didactics, research, and international relations accor ...

. He is known for his scientific contributions in the field of

gravitational wave 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 ...

(GW) research and the successful management of international scientific projects. In particular he has been the co-Principal Investigator of the cryogenic, resonant-bar GW detector

AURIGA AURIGA (''Antenna Ultracriogenica Risonante per l'Indagine Gravitazionale Astronomica'') is an ultracryogenic resonant bar gravitational wave detector in Italy. It is at the Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nuclea ...

and the Principal Investigator of the LISA Technology Package, the sole instrument of ESA´s

LISA Pathfinder LISA Pathfinder, formerly Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology-2 (SMART-2), was an ESA spacecraft that was launched on 3 December 2015 on board Vega flight VV06. The mission tested technologies needed for the Laser Interferometer S ...

mission. He continues to do scientific research and is Co-lead of the international LISA Consortium. LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, is the future gravitational wave-observatory in space, led by ESA. Stefano Vitale has served on many different committees. In particular he has been the chair of the

Fundamental Physics In physics, the fundamental interactions, also known as fundamental forces, are the interactions that do not appear to be reducible to more basic interactions. There are four fundamental interactions known to exist: the gravitational and electrom ...

Advisory group of Science Directorate of ESA, and the chair of ESA’s Science Programme Committee, the delegate body that steers the mandatory agency science program.

Career

Stefano Vitale received his Laurea in Physics at the University of Rome (now Università degli Studi di Roma "

La Sapienza The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...

") in 1976 and was a research fellow at the University of Trento from 1977 to 1979. From 1980 to 1985 he was appointed Assistant Professor for

Condensed Matter Physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the sub ...

at University of Trento, after which he became Associate Professor of Physics there. Since 1994 he was full Professor of Physics at the University of Trento and served 2001 to 2004 also as Deputy Rector (Prorettore Vicario). He retired from his Professorship on 30 Sep 2021. In 1992 Stefano Vitale was visiting professor at the Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley and from 1997 to 1998 he also was Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in California. Since 1985 Stefano Vitale is a research associate at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN). During his career, Vitale served on many national and international academic bodies, managing scientific projects and communities and advocating for basic and applied research.

Experimental gravitational wave research

Stefano Vitale got involved in experimental gravitational wave research in the late 1980s. From 1988 to 2001 and then again from 2005 until his retirement in 2021, he was Head of the Laboratory for Experimental Gravitation at the Department of Physics of the University of Trento where cutting edge technologies for gravitational wave observatories were developed and tested. From 1989 to 2003 Vitale was the co-Principal Investigator of the cryogenic, resonant-bar GW detector

, by the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, based in Legnaro. AURIGA has been the most sensitive of this kind of detectors, with the adoption of a three resonant mode configuration the design of which was led by Stefano Vitale.

The LISA Pathfinder and LISA missions

In 2003 Vitale became the Principal Investigator of the LISA Technology Package, the sole instrument of the

mission of the European Space Agency. LISA Pathfinder was the precursor to the space-based GW detector LISA ( Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), under development by ESA and NASA. LISA Pathfinder operated between 2015 and 2017, and successfully demonstrated the viability of the planned LISA Mission. Stefano Vitale led in particular, the design of the gravity reference sensor and the overall design of the experiment. LISA Pathfinder was decommissioned in July 2017 and the post of Principal Investigator duly expired in 2018. Stefano Vitale is a member of the core international scientific team behind LISA, serving both within international scientific team for several years and on the executive committee of the LISA consortium. From 2016 to 2017 he was Co-Principal Investigator of LISA and since 2020 he is Co-Lead of the LISA Consortium. The LISA Consortium is a large international collaboration that combines the resources and expertise from scientists in many countries all over the world. Together with ESA and NASA, the LISA Consortium is working to bring the LISA Mission to fruition.

Prizes and awards

* Asteroid N 19331, of IAU Catalogue of Minor Planets, has been named Stefanovitale. (2016) * As a member of LISA Pathfinder team, the ESA Corporate Team Achievement Award (2017) *As a member of LISA Pathfinder team, the 2017 Space Technology Award of the American Astronautical Society * Amaldi Medal (European Prize for Gravitation of the Italian Gravitation Society) (2018) * Tycho Brahe Medal of the European Astronomical Society (2020)

Science outreach publications

* Dalle onde ai buchi neri. Stefano Vitale, Le Scienze, (Italian edition of Scientific American) March 2004 (In Italian) * Timing Gravity. Stefano Vitale, Christophe Salomon and Wolfgang Ertmer in Looking up: Europe's quiet revolution in microgravity research Scientific American 2008 (In English. Also translated to German) * Dal big bang ai buchi neri. Paolo De Bernardis and Stefano Vitale, Le Scienze October 2009 (In Italian) * La colonna sonora dell'universo. Bernard Schutz e Stefano Vitale, Le Scienze May 2011, (In Italian. Translated to French for Pour la Science November 2011)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vitale, Stefano Italian physicists 20th-century Italian physicists 21st-century Italian physicists Living people University of Trento Sapienza University of Rome Gravitational-wave astronomy 1951 births