I graduated in 2021 in Physics with a doctorate in a cotutelle agreement between the University of Palermo (Italy) and the University of Tuebingen (Germany). After a first postdoc at IRAP in Toulouse (France), I am now in Rome, where I am carrying out a second postdoc, in close collaboration with Prof. Gianluca Israel and PhD candidate Matteo Imbrongo.
My research has always been devoted to the physics of accretion of compact objects (white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes) in X-ray binary systems. One example is the high-mass X-ray Binary Vela X-1, for which I performed high-resolution spectroscopic studies using Chandra data. Recently, X-ray binaries that are accreting at super-Eddington rates have caught my attention. These sources are known as Ultraluminous X-ray sources. With my present postdoctoral position, I intend to unveil the mysteries of their temporal variability.
In the past, I also modelled part of the X-ray background for the future ESA mission Athena and compiled the latest three releases (DR11–13) of the XMM-Newton Source Catalogue.
You can find more about me here: https://astroroberta.com/