About me
I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Nottingham Astronomy Group working together with Prof. Meghan Gray and Prof. Frazer Pierce. Previously, I was part of the Astrophysics & Space Research Group at the University of Birmingham, working together with Dr. Graham Smith and Dr. Sean McGee. I obtained my Ph.D in Physics in 2016 at the Institute for Astro and Particle Physics, University of Innsbruck, under the supervision of Ass. Prof. Francine R. Marleau in the field of observational galaxy evolution.
My research focuses on studying the effect of environment on galaxy evolution. Clusters of galaxies allow us to analyse gravitational and hydrodynamical interactions between galaxies and with the diffuse intracluster medium that are presumed to play a role in quenching both star formation and black hole accretion activity. As current member of the LIGO-Virgo electromagnetic follow-up collaboration, I have actively participated to the design, acquisition, reduction and analysis of the first observational campaign searching for strongly lensed counterparts of gravitational waves. This is a revolutionary campaign that is fully exploiting the new multi-messenger era of Astronomy, allowing to bridge between vastly different scales of interaction and probing simultaneously General Relativity, Dark Matter, and black hole physics. Furthermore, I studied the presence of black holes in different morphological types of galaxies and the relations between black hole and host down to the dwarf regime. In parallel, I am working on the effects of large scale motions on the dynamics and evolution of instabilities in the intracluster medium, considering both theoretical models and observational validations.
Matteo Bianconi 