Role: Optical Engineer, Radiation Analyst

My main field of research is the study of exoplanets. In particular, I work both with photometry of transits and with high-resolution spectroscopy, that I use for the characterization of their atmospheres, trying to look for the presence of hazes/clouds and elements like sodium and potassium, and molecules like TiO, H2O, CO, everything using the techniques of spectroscopy in transmission (studying also the stellar effects contaminating the retrieved planetary spectrum and the possible
influence of the terrestrial atmosphere) and emission (analyzing the light reflected from the planet as a function of wavelength).

I work on this topic also and mostly within the Italian project GAPS, which exploits the HARPS-N spectrograph at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo to discover and characterize exoplanets.

In the framework of the PLATO project, I study the darkening of the glasses of the different lenses once the satellite will be in orbit, after irradiation caused by solar protons. In particular, I estimate the transmissivity loss of the telescopes at the various wavelengths as the time spent in space increases.