I am an assistant professor working in extra-galactic astrophysics, focusing on very luminous active galactic nuclei (quasars) in the epoch of reionization.
Current Position: Assistant Professor
Projects
My current research focuses on the discovery and characterization of the first luminous quasars in the very early universe (i.e. ~800 Myr old). These objects host very massive black holes in their centers, and they are formidable beacons of the pristine cosmic times. I am interested both in their physical properties and in the environments where they live in, which are predicted to be among the richest in the first Gyr of the universe. I am recently focusing on early quasars with powerful radio-jets, in particular working on characterizing the role of the jets in the early black hole growth, and in the black hole/host-galaxy co-evolution.
Highlights
- I am currently part of different international collaborations aimed at studying early quasars using state-of-the-art facilities, e.g., among others, XQR-30 (https://xqr30.inaf.it/) and EREBUS-ASPIRE (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021jwst.prop.2078W/abstract).
- I am also part of a Chilean-based 4MOST community survey (ChANGES; https://www.eso.org/sci/publications/messenger/archive/no.190-mar23/messenger-no190-34-37.pdf).
- Among others, we published papers on the discovery of the most distant quasar known at that time (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018ApJ…861L..14B/abstract; https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/found-most-distant-black-hole) and of the most distant quasar with powerful radio-jets known yet (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021ApJ…909…80B/abstract ; https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2103/).
Publications
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/user/libraries/GiPn2F9sSd24dJWJv69msQ
Extracurricular activities
In my free time, I love reading, playing volleyball and hiking.