MPDM is a Researcher Astronomer at INAF, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, with main interests in the physical properties of solar and stellar structure and evolution. She is one of the main experts in Italy in Asteroseismology of solar-like stars, the study of structure and dynamics of stars by small stellar pulsations.
Born in Torino in Italy in 1970, she grew up and studied in Catania, where she got her master’s degree in 1995 by discussing a thesis on the results obtained by using new Helioseismic data detected from the space by MDI instrument flying on SOHO (SOlar Heliospheric Observatory).
After some experience as phD student in Warsaw at the Nicolaus Copernicus Center, in 1999 she obtained her PhD in Physics and got a research grant to spend few months in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia. She was postdoc and teacher in stellar oscillations in Denmark at the Department of Physics of the University of Aarhus from 1999 to 2001. In 2001 she got a permanent position as staff astronomer at the Astrophysical Observatory of Catania and in 2005 she moved to IAPS, Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali in Rome.
She wrote 87 articles published on main international scientific journals, 34 as first author, for a total of more than 2500 citations. In addition she is review editor for the journals ’Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences’ and ’Frontiers in Physics”.
She was PI for INAF and co-founder of HELAS, the European Network in Helio- and Asteroseismology, funded from 2006-2010 as a Coordinating Action within the FP6 framework of the European Commission.
She has been part of the Scientific Advisory board appointed by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) for VQR (Evaluation of the Quality of the Research) and Premio ‘Rita Levi Montalcini’; she has been member of the review panel for assignment of national funding through PRIN, SIR, FIRB and other competitions.
She is Expert Reviewer for ERC by European Research Council, for project grants by the Narodowe Centrum Kultury (National Centre for Culture) of Polish Ministry of Education and for post-doc grants by Research Foundation – Flanders (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen, FWO Belgium). She takes also part to outreach activities of her institute for students of schools and general public, partecipating every year to the Research night event, Maker Faire, The week of Light etc. Since 2015, she organizes selection for the Italian Astronomy Olympiad and was team leader of the International Astronomy Olympiad in 2016.
The Global Architecture of Planetary Systems 