Eleonora Troja

Eleonora Troja is an Italian astrophysicist. In 2017 she led the discovery of X-ray emission from the gravitational wave source GW170817.

Career In July 2013, Troja became the Swift Guest Investigator Program Lead at NASA GSFC. In 2021 she joined the University of Rome Tor Vergata as Associate Professor.

Research Troja researches high-energy astrophysics, gamma-ray bursts (GRB), and electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational waves. In her career Troja worked on a variety of different aspects of the GRB phenomenon, although her focus is the connection between short duration GRBs, neutron star mergers, and gravitational wave sources.

Troja's main interest is to investigate the observational signatures of compact binary mergers, that is, binary systems composed by either two neutron stars (NS-NS) or a neutron star and a black hole (NS-BH) which slowly spiral into each other and eventually collide due to energy losses to gravitational radiation. Compact binary mergers lie at the intersection of several key aspects of modern astrophysics:

they are the most likely cause of short duration gamma-ray bursts; they are strong sources of gravitational wave radiation, and prime candidates for direct detection with advanced LIGO and Virgo; they are the most promising r-process sites for the formation of all the heavy elements (i.e. gold, platinum, uranium, …) found on Earth.

These three fundamental areas of investigation are at the core of Troja's research. NASA Silver Achievement Medal (2018) Italian Bilateral Scientific Cooperation Award (2018) to recognize an Italian eminent scientist who, in performing his/her research abroad, has made a remarkable contribution to the advancement of science and technology, thus improving Italy’s S&T relations with foreign countries and with International Organizations.