A lecture by dr. Alessandra Mastrobuono-Battisti, Università La Sapienza Roma, presently postdoc fellow at the Technion in Haifa.
Young Italian scholars travelling between East and West
Young Italian scholars travelling between East and WestTHE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSEA lecture by dr. Alessandra Mastrobuono-Battisti, Università La Sapienza Roma, presently postdoc fellow at the Technion in Haifa.Hearth is a planet like many others, born around an ordinary star, the Sun, within an ordinary galaxy, the Milky Way. Yet, we are only here, on the only planet within the Solar System, where the temperature is mild enough to allow liquid water and therefore life, protected by the atmosphere and by a powerful magnetic field, which shield us from dangerous radiations.How did all of this originated? How did the Universe developed? How did the galaxies and the stars, which are part of them, generated? In addition, how did the planet systems formed and, in particular, when and how Hearth started rotating around the Sun?In this seminar, Dr. Mastrobuono-Battisti will try to reply to such questions, explaining the work of the researchers who are looking for answers to issues, which intrigue humanity since its outset.Alessandra Mastrobuono-Battisti: Her past and current research efforts focus on the field of stellar dynamics. She faced this problem both from the numerical and the observational point of view and, in particular, worked on numerical simulations of the dynamical evolution of star clusters in galaxies.In particular, during her PhD she gained knowledge and abilities in the study of dynamical evolution of globular clusters in Milky Way-like potentials, paying particular attention to the possible consequences on the Galactic structure. For this purpose she used N-body direct summation parallel codes which she wrote during her PhD. The codes exploit GPUs as computing accelerators, by mean of the CUDA C programming language and can run on multiple GPUs and CPUs systems.There is a close interplay between stellar dynamics, stellar evolution, the clusters' stellar content and the dynamics and properties of galaxies. Results obtained in the study of star clusters provide an excellent opportunity to better understand the evolutionary and formation history of their host galaxy.Further references:- http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7546/full/nature14333.html– http://www.space.com/29047-how-moon-formed-earth-collision-theory.htmlEvent held in Italian.Monday, June 29th, 2015, at 19:00Italian Cultural Instituterehov Meir Rutberg 12 – HaifaFREE ADMISSION