[picture]
 Alessandra Buonanno
Associate Professor of Physics
University of Maryland, 
College Park, MD 20742-4111 
Gravitation Theory Group - Department of Physics
Room 4212
Phone: (301)-405-1440 
FAX: (301)-314-9525 
E-mail: buonanno@umd.edu



I was an undergraduate and graduate student at the Department of Physics of the University of Pisa, in Italy. After spending eight
months at CERN, as research associate, I went to the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, in the Paris area, as postdoctoral
scholar and, then, to the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, as Tolman fellow. I was then hired by the Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, as chargée de recherche de premiere classe (CR1). I worked at the Institut d'
Astrophysique de Paris and then at the Laboratoire Astroparticule et Cosmologie, in Paris. I joined the Physics faculty at Maryland
in September 2005.  
 
Curriculum vitae et studiorum
Research interests: theoretical physics, gravitational-wave physics and cosmology of the early Universe

My current research covers a wide range of problems related to the theory and the detection of gravitational waves, including


- analytical description of the two-body dynamics during the last stages of inspiral, plunge and merger 
 
- interfacing analytical and numerical relativity in modeling gravitational waves emitted by black-hole binaries

- spin effects in compact binaries

- quantum-optical noise in gravitational-wave detectors

- design of gravitational-wave detectors operating at or below the standard quantum limit

- primordial gravitational waves


I am a member of the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics


I am a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration

Current group members:

Enrico Barausse  (postdoctoral scholar)

 Yi Pan (postdoctoral scholar)

Etienne Racine (postdoctoral scholar)


Sergey Kurennoy (graduate student)

 Evan Ochsner (graduate student)


Former group members:

Jeremy Schnittman (Chandra Fellow, Johns Hopkins)


Teaching:

- Gravitational-wave physics (PHYS 879)
 
   Spring 2006
 
- Classical mechanics (PHYS 405)

   Spring 2007, 2008, 2009


- Introduction to Gravity, Relativity and Cosmology (PHYS 675)

   Fall 2008


Recent Publications
(Via Spires Database )

Back to the Gravitation Theory Group Home Page
Back to UMD Physics Department Home Page
Last updated: 11 May 2009
Send your comments to: buonanno@umd.edu