I borrowed the expression blind watcher of the sky from my advisor's book about the history of cosmology and of the people who shaped the current view of the universe. Cosmologists are blind watchers of the sky in the sense that the answer to their questions often lies right before their eyes but most of the time they fail to see it because they're like lost in a fog where data and theories seem not to make sense.
Up to a few days ago I could probably say that I consider myself an apprentice watcher. I successfully defended my thesis on May 3rd, 2006... I am now wondering whether I lost the apprentice status at that moment or not. To be truly honest, I should probably say that I hope not and that I still consider myself an apprentice watcher... just add the "Ph.D." suffix at the end.
Other Documents
Snap Collaboration Meeting, Fermilab, Dec. 2nd 2005 - Learning to Love the Scatter in Type Ia Supernovae (presentation)
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Not exactly the most common of paths... Yes, I was not born a physicist. I became, because particle astrophysics and theoretical cosmology are what I like the most. As a matter of fact, my path was the opposite of many physics students, who end up working in finance upon graduating. I took the opposite road, and I am very happy of my choice, even if it implied that I had to spend more time for my education than it is usually the case. |
Interests and Research My interests are focused on that special interplay between particle physics and general relativity that is commonly known as theoretical cosmology and particle astrophysics. More specifically, I am interested in the aspects of the inflationary theory leading to the production of curvature perturbations in the early Universe and in the development and understanding of second order perturbation theory of a FLRW background spacetime. Another area of great interest is the investigation of the accelerated expansion phase that the observable Universe is currently undergoing. Lately I have been involved in a project on weak gravitational lensing of Type Ia Supernovae with Scott Dodelson and I am currently working together with Tim Tait, Gianfranco Bertone and Michele Liguori on the possible detection of Kaluza-Klein dark matter annihilation in the galactic halo. |
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Education 1998: Laurea 110/110 con lode (highest achievable score) in Ingegneria Gestionale (Engineering for Business and Finance) from Politecnico di Torino. 2006: Ph.D. awarded from the University of Chicago. |
Seminars, Talks and Conferences The most recent talk I gave was at Saclay, France, where I presented the long version of "Learning to love the scatter in Type Ia Supernovae". Before that, I gave a talk at the SNAP collaboration meeting held in Fermilab on Nov. 31st - Dec. 2nd., where I showed the recent results obtained working with Scott Dodelson on gravitational lensing of SNIa. Also,at the "New Views of the Universe" symposium held in Chicago on Dec. 2005, I have presented a poster in the "Early Universe" parallel session. This poster is related to the work I carried out with my advisor Edward "Rocky" Kolb and with Antonio Riotto on the curvature perturbation generation during the preheating stage of inflation and on its experimental signature, which is characterized by a non-negligible non-gaussianity. Last year, I gave a seminar at my old University, Politecnico di Torino, titled "Curvature Perturbation Generation in the Early Universe". Also, while progressing with my work I gave some informal seminars at Sean Carroll's group meetings to "test drive" my results. Finally, the thesis with which I graduated from Politecnico di Torino was presented at the Santa Fe Institute in the fall of 2000. |
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Contact Informations Alberto Vallinotto |
Why this page is boring? No wonder it is a boring looking page. This "should" be my official webpage, and this comment by itself is already making it not as dull as it should to conform to the strict U of C boredom standards. So here you'll find useful stuff, the sort of things headhunters look for when they're planning to offer gazillions of dollars to physics graduate students, but nothing exciting like the memories of my last trips... |