Alberto Vecchio

Alberto Vecchio is an Italian astrophysicist and Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Birmingham, where he is the founding Director of the Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy. His research spans gravitational-wave astronomy across the frequency spectrum, including ground-based laser interferometry with LIGO and Virgo, pulsar timing arrays, and the future space-based Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). He is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration team that made the first direct detection of gravitational waves in September 2015.

Education

Vecchio studied theoretical physics as an undergraduate at Ghislieri College and the University of Pavia, graduating with a Laurea in 1991. He obtained a PhD in astronomy from the University of Milan in 1996, where he worked under Bruno Bertotti, a student of Erwin Schrödinger.

Career

After completing his PhD, Vecchio held postdoctoral positions at Cardiff University and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam, where he subsequently worked as a research scientist. During the 2006–07 academic year, he was a visiting professor at Northwestern University.

At Birmingham, Vecchio founded the Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy and serves as its Director. He also heads the Astrophysics and Space Research group.

Research

Vecchio's research focuses on using gravitational radiation to study the universe and to test gravity in extreme conditions. His work spans the astrophysics of compact objects, Bayesian data analysis techniques, and gravitational-wave observations across multiple frequency bands. He is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the GEO Collaboration, and the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Collaboration. He was part of the team that detected gravitational waves from the first binary black hole merger, GW150914, in September 2015. He is a member of the LISA Consortium and serves as Principal Investigator of the UK contribution to the LISA Science Ground Segment, leading a collaboration between the universities of Birmingham, Glasgow, Portsmouth, Southampton, and Cambridge.

Pulsar timing arrays

Vecchio is a member of the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA), serving on its steering committee, and the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA). His work in this area includes the stochastic gravitational-wave background from massive black hole binary populations and its implications for PTA observations.

Students

Vecchio has supervised a number of doctoral students at the University of Birmingham, several of whom have gone on to academic research careers. His former PhD students include:

Chiara Mingarelli (PhD 2014), who worked on gravitational-wave astrophysics with pulsar timing arrays, including the characterisation of anisotropy in the gravitational-wave background. She is now an Assistant Professor of Physics at Yale University and a member of the NANOGrav collaboration. Rory Smith (PhD 2013), who worked on detection and parameter estimation for coalescing compact binaries with advanced detectors. Katherine Grover (PhD 2015), who worked on sky localisation and tests of general relativity using gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence. Siyuan Chen (PhD 2018), who worked on constraining astrophysical models of supermassive black hole binary populations using pulsar timing arrays. Serena Vinciguerra (PhD 2018), who worked on studying neutron-star and black-hole binaries with gravitational waves. Riccardo Buscicchio (PhD 2022), who worked on Bayesian population inference for gravitational-wave astronomy.

Awards and honours

Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2016), shared with the LIGO team for the detection of gravitational waves Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS)

Selected publications