Today I delivered a seminar in the Intercontinental Seminars on Gravity and Cosmology series by the title of Five brief lessons on the Hubble tension (slides here). The seminar was recorded and posted on YouTube, here is the link. I highly recommend this seminar series!
Teaching feedback
I just received the feedback from students of the courses I delivered last semester (again General Physics I part 2 and Advanced Topics in Theoretical Physics). As with last year, the feedback was excellent, with a satisfaction index of 100% (which in turn gives me lots of satisfaction): particularly appreciated were my efforts to develop the students’ physical intuition, which is something I indeed consistently pay particular attention with. Again, these positive comments will motivate me to do even better next time (when I will also be taking over the Special Relativity course, after decades during which Luciano Vanzo taught it - a rather big pair of shoes to fill)!
Visit by Leonardo Giani
We are delighted to have Leonardo (Leo) Giani visiting us once more! Leo is a postdoc at the University of Queensland, where he is working on a bunch of very interesting things gravity- and cosmology-related, including our recent work on Laniakea. We took the opportunity to catch up on a few ideas which had been hanging around (and are turning into student projects), while Leo also gave a seminar by the title of “Cosmology from the point of view of an almost spherical cow”.
Leonardo Comini joins my group!
More members joining my group (and more to come soon)! Today Leonardo Comini has officially begun his Master’s thesis work under my supervision, where he will be studying what a particular class of early JWST observations have to say about ΛCDM. Welcome Leonardo, looking forward to our work together!
Teaching ends today (for now)
My teaching duties for the autumn semester end today, with the final lecture for the cosmology course focused on deriving the angular power spectrum of CMB temperature anisotropies (a lecture I always particularly enjoy, even though students seem to find it particularly difficult). Unlike the previous semester, this one was much lighter, as I only taught my cosmology course. It was once more very rewarding to interact with a bunch of bright students, whom I really hope enjoyed the course, and whose feedback I look forward to. While the next two months will be devoted to exams (teaching restarts at the end of February), I’ll be able to focus almost entirely on research, with the goal of wrapping up a few papers which are nearly done but just need a final push. So, once more, stay tuned for some interesting work which hopefully will appear in the coming months!
Davide Pedrotti (re)joins my group!
Today Davide Pedrotti, after an excellent MSc defense, (re)joins my group as a PhD student. We will be starting some very cool work on cosmological tensions, while also carrying on Davide’s earlier research interests in black hole physics. Stay tuned in particular for our upcoming paper on the connection between quasinormal modes and shadows for rotating regular BHs, which constituted a major part of Davide’s MSc thesis! Welcome (back) Davide!
Teaching feedback
I just received the feedback from students of the courses I delivered last semester (General Physics I part 2 and Advanced Topics in Theoretical Physics). The feedback was excellent, with a satisfaction index of 100%! Given the amount of work I put into preparing the courses, and the enthuasism I tried to instill, I was really happy to read the students’ comments, especially for the Advanced Topics in Theoretical Physics aka Cosmology course (see below) - the students really appeared to appreciate my efforts to always help them not lose sight of the big picture, even when the latter risked being obscured by the complexity of the calculations (especially when it came to deriving the Boltzmann equations). I do indeed find it important (not only in my work but also in my research) to, so to say, “not lose sight of the forest for the trees”. I found the feedback really rewarding, and the comments will motivate me to do even better in the coming semesters!
Teaching restarts today
Today my teaching duties restart again. Fortunately this semester I’ll have a much lighter load, both because I’ll only be teaching one course (again Advanced Topics in Theoretical Physics, following the same program as last semester), and obviously because I already delivered the same course previously. Last semester’s course was a great success and was truly satisfying, with a number of excellent students attending (many of which will end up doing their MSc theses with me), so I hope this semester will be as successful. And there will definitely be much more time for research this time! Once more, all my teaching material will be made publicly available, while being regularly updated, on the English and Italian versions of my teaching page.
Visit by Anish Ghoshal
This week we have Anish Ghoshal, currently a postdoc at the University of Warsaw, visiting us for a couple of days. Anish is visiting to work on a couple of projects both with me and Max Rinaldi, respectively on novel dark matter production mechanisms, and inflation. Welcome Anish!
Teaching ends today (for now)
Today marks the end of the teaching period, which will restart in September. Now of course it’s time for exams (already the coming Monday)! While it was truly nice to be able interact with many bright young minds, teaching two and a half courses was also particularly heavy, I’m not gonna lie, so I really look forward to a couple of months where I will be able to mostly focus on research. So, hopefully, several new papers should come out in the next months. Stay tuned!
Giovanni Piccoli joins my group!
My group is expanding, and as of today includes also Giovanni Piccoli. He will be working on his Master’s thesis under my supervision, and we plan to explore novel cosmological and terrestrial tests of the (very) small-scale matter power spectrum - no spoilers, you’ll have to wait and see what we come up with! Welcome Giovanni, and looking forward to our work together!
Teaching starts today!
Today marks the start of the new semester, and with it of my teaching duties. I have a particularly heavy teaching load this semester (as a result of my having started mid-semester in October, which implied I obviously could not teach classes in the previous semester), where I’ll be lecturing General Physics I part 2 (basically Classical Thermodynamics, roughly following Zemansky) for the Mathematics BSc, Advanced Topics in Theoretical Physics (which, despite the cryptic name, is an advanced course in Modern Cosmology, which will more or less cover Chapters 1-8 of Dodelson) for the Physics MSc, as well as within the Percorso di Approfondimento in Fisica (PAF), a supplement lecture series for the Physics BSc aimed towards particularly capable and motivated students. Needless to say, I already know that throughout the semester research will proceed on a very low gear in the best of cases (and I hope my collaborators won’t hate me for this! 😝). However, despite the overall heavy load, I really look forward to teaching and interacting with bright young minds! As an aside, all my teaching material (notes, slides, exams, solutions, and so on) will be available, while being regularly updated, on the English and Italian versions of my teaching page.
