Hello and welcome!
I’m a cosmologist at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy, where I’m Professor of Theoretical Physics and the Head the newly established group in Theoretical and Scientific Data Science. Since Nov 2024, I am the Director of SISSA’s Interdisciplinary Lab.
I’m also a Visiting Professor of Astrostatistics at Imperial College London, where I’m an Academic Fellow of the Data Science Institute. Between 2019 and 2022, I have been a Visiting Professor of Cosmology at Gresham College, where I gave a series of public lectures on cosmology, now available online. I am a science communicator and author and I take part in numerous public engagement with science activities, from science festivals to radio broadcasts… and I have a new book out! ✨ ✨✨
STARBORN: How the Stars Made Us—and Who We Would Be Without Them, tells the story of how the night has shaped human history, and imagines our radically different we would be if our ancestors had looked up at the sky and seen… nothing.
“A stunning and unforgettable voyage through the stars” ✨✨✨ Stephen Fry
“A remarkable book… profoundly moving” ✨✨✨ Khalid Abdalla
“A masterwork – vast, deep and soulful” ✨✨✨ Samantha Harvey
“Illuminating” ✨✨✨ Robin Ince
“Mr. Trotta writes like a poet, suffusing fact-dense pages with heart and even ardor… an engaging cultural history, salted with well-placed literary reference and the occasional personal anecdote…accessible and enjoyable… meticulously researched, with an almost limitless archive of stellar trivia.” ✨✨✨ The Wall Street Journal
“Beautifully written” ✨✨✨ Nature
⭐⭐⭐ BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week 2023
⭐⭐⭐ Best Books of 2023 (New Scientist)
⭐⭐⭐ Ten Best Science Books of 2023 (The Smithsonian Magazine)
⭐⭐⭐ Best Books of 2023 (Christian Science Monitor)
STARBORN is now available in all good bookstores and online! Order your copy today! US version | UK version
Also available as ebook and audiobook from the links above.
Upcoming translations: Italian (Il Saggiatore,2025), Korean (Mirae N & Co, 2026), Spanish (Pasado & Presente, 2026), Chinese simplified characters (Unread Sky, 2026)
My research in cosmology is about analysing, interpreting and making sense of cosmological observations, in order to learn more about the properties and nature of dark matter and dark energy. I’m also interested in the early Universe and in developing connections between cosmology and particle physics. I develop and apply new methods in Bayesian statistics and data analysis, machine learning, deep learning and AI with the goal of understanding the history and nature of the Universe, by using cosmology as a Universe-sized laboratory for particle and high energy physics.
In 2012 I co-founded Data Fusion Consultants, a start-up offering statistical consultancy, custom-made data analysis and training for a broad variety of clients, which I directed until 2020. I work as a scientific consultant with museums, writers, film makers and artists, providing the help and support they need to make their artistic creations scientifically sound.
As Director of the Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication between Aug 2015 and July 2020, I was part of Imperial’s senior management team and the academic lead for the Centre’s activities. I was responsible for about 180 staff, and the academic director of the Imperial Horizons programme (delivering teaching in humanities subjects and languages to over 4500 undergraduates at Imperial); the Evening Classes programme; and two MSc programmes in Science Communication.
Between 2013 and 2017 I have been an STFC Public Engagement Fellow, in which capacity I designed and ran the public engagement programme The Hands-On Universe. My award-winning first book for the public, The Edge of the Sky (Basic Books) explains the Universe (‘All-There-Is’) using only the most common 1,000 words in English. For this book I was named by Foreign Policy one of the 100 Global Thinkers 2014. I was awarded the 2020 Annie Maunder Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for my work in public engagement. My latest book, STARBORN, has been named a BBC Radio 4 book of the week.
Biographical sketch
Roberto was born and grew up in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. After obtaining an MSc(Hons) in Physics from ETH Zurich and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Geneva, he moved to Oxford, where he was the Lockyer Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society at Oxford University and a Junior Fellow of St Anne’s College. In 2008, he was appointed at Imperial College London, where he became Professor of Astrostatistics in 2019. In 2020, he moved to SISSA to establish a new Data Science group and PhD programme. He is currently a Professor of Theoretical Physics at SISSA, where he leads the Data Science group, a visiting Professor at Imperial College London, and the Director of the Interdisciplinary Lab at SISSA.
Named by Foreign Policy as one of the 100 Global Thinkers of 2014 in the “Chroniclers” category, he is a recipient of the Lord Kelvin Award of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Michelson Prize of Case Western Reserve University, the Chair Georges Lemaître of the Université Catholique de Louvain in 2018, and several awards for excellence in education and societal engagement at Imperial College London. He was deeply honoured to receive the 2020 Annie Maunder Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for his work in promoting public understanding of astronomy and cosmology.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, a member of the Swiss Society for Astronomy and Astrophysics, a member of the International Astronomical Union, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a member of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis, and a Next Einstein Fellow at the African Institute for Mathematical Studies in Cape Town.
Roberto lives with his wife and their two young children near Trieste, Italy, in the Karst region, a plateau nestled between the sparkling Mediterranean Sea and lush forests.
Roberto Trotta – CV (August 2024)
Honours and Awards
- Annie Maunder Medal 2020, Royal Astronomical Society, UK
- Chair Georges Lemaître 2018, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
- President’s Award for Leadership in Public Engagement 2018, Imperial College London
- Significance Lecture, Royal Statistical Society, 2017
- President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching 2016, Imperial College London
- Faculty of Natural Sciences Prize for Excellence in Teaching 2016, Imperial College London
- Excellence Award, Stio town hall council, 2014, Salerno, Italy
- Foreign Policy 100 Global Thinkers 2014
- British Council English Lecture, 2014
- Michelson postdoctoral lectureship prize 2008, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA
- Lord Kelvin award lecture 2007, British Association for the Advancement of Science
