I am building a new cross-disciplinary research group, called “AstroML”, at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, with the aim of bringing together expertise in statistics, astrophysics, cosmology and data science. Our research focuses on machine learning, data science, cosmology and Bayesian methods. We are also active in science communication and consulting, and have an interest in ethical aspects of machine learning.

Our group is part of the Theoretical and Scientific Data Science group and PhD programme at SISSA.

Current job opportunities and PhD bursaries

For postdoc openings and PhD fellowship opportunities in my group, please see our Data Science group job opportunities web page. Our PhD bursaries are open to candidates from all countries irrespective of nationality. Women and candidates from under-represented groups are particularly encouraged.

Current members

Gabriella Contardo
Postdoc

Gabriella (Gaby) is a postdoctoral researcher working on machine learning and data-mining methods with a focus on applications in astrophysics. She’s interested in topological and geometrical data analysis, self-supervised and unsupervised methods for representation learning, and dimensionality reduction. She’s also interested in exploring other learning frameworks for science applications with low or weak supervision (e.g. one-class classification, meta-learning, contrastive learning).

She completed her PhD in Machine Learning / Computer Science at Universite Pierre et Marie Curie (Sorbonnes Universite) in Paris in 2017, where she worked on machine learning under budget constraints (cost-sensitive prediction, meta-learning for active learning). She joined the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Simons Foundation in New York as a Flatiron Research Fellow in 2018. She joined SISSA in September 2022.

Andre Joshua Scaffidi
Postdoc

Andre is a postdoctoral researcher primarily focused on machine learning applications to problems in high energy/astroparticle physics with a specific focus on dark matter and beyond the standard model physics.

He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Adelaide in Australia where a majority of his work focused on dark matter phenomenology, before moving to INFN Torino for 2 years where he acquired a more generalized interest in unsupervised learning and generative models before ultimately ending up with the data science group at SISSA in November 2022.  

Chiara Moretti
Postdoc

Chiara is a postdoctoral researcher mainly focused on cosmology, specifically on the Large Scale Structure of the Universe and nonlinear galaxy clustering. She works on theoretical modelling of cosmological observables and Bayesian inference of cosmological parameters from upcoming galaxy survey data. She’s involved in the science preparation of the Euclid mission, in modelling and testing the nonlinear galaxy power spectrum and bispectrum both in LCDM and extended cosmological models, and in the optimisation of the likelihood pipeline. She’s also a developer of the official Euclid likelihood package.

She got her PhD in 2020 from the University of Trieste, working on approximate cosmological simulations in the context of modified gravity theories. She then moved first to Queen Mary University in London and then to the University of Edinburgh, where she focused mainly on theoretical modelling of the nonlinear galaxy distribution, forecasts for Stage-IV spectroscopic surveys and data analysis of available galaxy clustering data.

Twitter page

Rahul Srinivasan
Postdoc

Rahul analyzes challenges in astrophysics using computer simulations and machine learning. Particularly, he is interested in detecting black holes and understanding their progenitor galaxy and stellar environments. To this end, he works on developing rapid gravitational wave detection pipelines and improving simulations of binary black hole formation. 

Since December 2023, he has been a postdoctoral researcher in the SISSA Data Science group. He received his Ph.D. in 2023 from the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France on the topic of understanding the galactic environment of stellar mass binary black holes. In his Master’s degree in Physics (2018), he specialized in exploring geodesics around charged, spinning black holes spacetimes.

Mauro Rigo
PhD student

Mauro is a second-year Ph.D. student. He got his master’s degree in Computational Physics from the University of Trento, where he graduated with a thesis on Variational Monte Carlo methods using Neural Network Quantum States.

He’s interested in Physics, Data Science, and Machine Learning, and in how each field can benefit from sharing the tools and frameworks developed within the others. He likes programming, cooking, drawing, and hiking and he plays the guitar.”

Kosio Karchev
PhD student

Kosio is a doctoral student on the intersection(s) of cosmology and data science. Until now he has focused mainly on inference of dark matter on galactic and sub-galactic scales and is now starting with supernova cosmology.

In his spare time, he loves taking (and editing) photographs, programming data visualisations, if the inspiration strikes, and he occasionally plays the guitar.

Twitter pagePublications

Mingmeng Geng
PhD student

Mingmeng graduated from the Ingénieur Polytechnicien Program at Ecole Polytechnique in France, and he also holds a Master’s degree (M2) in Mathematical Modelling.  

He has always been attracted to interdisciplinary research involving social sciences or biology and has done several internships on machine learning, biophysics, and biomathematics. He is currently a PhD student at SISSA and his research topic is big data analytics to innovate demoscopic polling and improve understanding of public perception. 

He enjoys traveling, watching movies, and is a fan of many sports. 

Satvik Mishra
PhD student

Satvik is a new Ph.D. student in the Theoretical and Scientific Data Science group at SISSA. He obtained his M.Sc degree in Physics from RWTH Aachen University, focusing on Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology, and carried out his thesis on Modeling the Epoch of Reionization.

His other interests include photography, cooking, and traveling.

Past members

Former postdoctoral researchers:

Matteo Breschi (2023), Ira Wolfson (2020-2022), Victor Bonjean (2019-20), Alex Geringer-Sameth (2017-20), Eliel Camargo-Molina (2018-2020, Kaisey Mandel (2014)

Former PhD students (graduation year in parenthesis):

Maximilian Autenrieth (2023), Wahidur Rahman (2023), Sebastian Hoof (2019), James MacKay (2018), Hikmatali Shariff (2017), Charlotte Strege (2014), Marisa March (2011).

Former MSc students (graduation year in parenthesis):

S. di Gioia (2022), R. Corti (2021), M. von Wietersheim-Kramsta (2019), H. Bouvier, S. Kobayashi (2017), E. Revsbech (2016), I. Siska, A. Monge Imedio (2016), S. Pak, K. Blanchette (2015), T. Kealy, A. Adam (2009).