Prof. Dr. Alessandra Buonanno
Director at Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics
Head of the department Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity
Address:
Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik
(Albert-Einstein-Institut)
Am Mühlenberg 1
D-14476 Potsdam
GERMANY
Phone: +49 331 567-7220
Fax: +49 331 567-7298
E-mail: alessandra.buonanno@aei.mpg.de
Curriculum Vitae
Personal Data
| Nationalities: | Italian (by birth), USA (naturalized) |
Education
| 1993 - 1996 | Ph.D. in Physics, University of Pisa, Italy |
| 1993 | Master in Physics (Laurea), University of Pisa, Italy |
Employment
| 2020 - present | Research Professor, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD |
| 2017 - present | Honorary Professor of Physics, Humboldt University, Berlin |
| 2017 - present | Honorary Professor of Physics, Potsdam University, Potsdam |
| 2014 - present | Director, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics |
| 2014 - present | Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society |
| 2014 - 2020 | College Park Professor, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD |
| 2010 - 2014 | Professor, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD |
| Sep 2005 - 2010 | Associate Professor (tenured), Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD |
| 2005 - 2014 | Visiting Associate, Caltech, Pasadena, CA |
Sep 2005 - | Chargée de Recherche de 1 ere classe (tenured) of CNRS (on leave of absence), Laboratoire d’Astroparticule et Cosmologie (APC), Paris, France |
| Jan 2005 - Aug 2005 | Chargée de Recherche de 1 ere classe (tenured) of CNRS, Laboratoire d’Astroparticule et Cosmologie (APC), Paris, France |
Dec 2001 - | Chargée de Recherche de 1 ere classe (tenured) of CNRS, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris (IAP), Paris, France |
| Jan 2002 - Oct 2002 | Visiting Associate, Caltech, Pasadena, CA |
| 1999 - 2001 | Richard C. Tolman Prize Postdoctoral Fellow, Caltech, Pasadena, CA |
| 1997 - 1999 | Postdoctoral Fellow, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES), Bures-sur-Yvette (Paris), France |
| Jan 1997 - Sep 1997 | Research Associate, Theoretical Division of CERN, Geneva, Switzerland |
Awards and Honors
| 2024 | Synergy Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), together with Enrico Barausse (SISSA), Zvi Bern (University of California), and Maarten van de Meent (Niels Bohr Institute) |
| 2023 | Oskar Klein Medal and Memorial Lecture by Stockholm University and the Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences |
| 2023 | Elected member of the Italian National Academy of Sciences |
| 2022 | Tomalla Prize of the Tomalla Foundation for Gravity Research |
| 2021 | Balzan Prize of the International Balzan Prize Foundation (shared with T. Damour) |
| 2021 | Dirac Medal and Prize of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (shared with T. Damour, F. Pretorius and S. Teukolsky) |
| 2021 | Elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences |
| 2021 | Elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina |
| 2021 | Elected member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities |
| 2021 | Galileo Galilei Medal of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) (shared with T. Damour and F. Pretorius) |
| 2019 | 8th Benjamin Lee Professorship, Asian Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics, South Korea |
| 2018 | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (€ 2.5 million) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) |
| 2016 | Lower Saxony State Prize (shared with B. Allen and K. Danzmann) |
| 2014 - 2020 | Distinguished Visiting Research Chair, Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada |
| 2011 - 2012 | William and Flora Hewlett Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA |
| 2011 | Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) |
| 2010 |
Elected Fellow of the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation |
| 2007 |
Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, |
| 2006 - 2008 |
Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship |
| 1999 - 2002 |
Richard C. Tolman Prize Fellow, Caltech, Pasadena, CA |
| 2000 |
Italian Society of General Relativity and Gravitational Physics (SIGRAV) Prize |
Awards as member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration
| 2017 | U.K. Group Achievement Award of the Royal Astronomical Society to the LIGO Scientific Collaboration |
| 2017 | Einstein Medal of the Einstein Society in Bern, Switzerland, to the LIGO Scientific Collaboration |
| 2017 | Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research to R. Drever, K. Thorne and R. Weiss, and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration |
| 2017 | HEAD Bruno Rossi Prize 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 |
Selected Service in the Physics Community
| 2023 - present | Member of the Dirac Medal Committee |
| 2023 - present | Member of the Research Board of the Austrian Academy of Sciences |
| 2023 - present | Member of the Solvay International Scientific Committee for Physics |
| 2022 - present | Member of the Committee of the Aspen Institute Italia Award for Scientific Research and Collaboration between Italy and the United States |
| 2019 - 2021 | Member of the Senior Committee (appointed by the Director of Science) of the European Space Agency (ESA) for Voyage 2050 |
| 2019 - 2022 | Member of the Kavli Prize Committee in Astrophysics |
| 2019 - present | Member of the Advisory Board of the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, Paris |
| 2018 - present | Member of the Advisory Board of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA |
| 2018 - present | Member of the LISA Consortium Board |
| 2017 - 2019 | Member of the Gravitational Physics Division (GPD) Board of the European Physical Society |
| 2012 - 2015 | Member of the Committee of International Freedom of Scientists of the American Physical Society (APS) |
| 2010 - 2013 | Member of the Advisory Board of KITP, Santa Barbara, CA |
| 2005 - present | Principal Investigator of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration |