Amedeo Balbi

Current Position: Professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Physics Department at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy

Bio: Amedeo Balbi is professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Physics Department at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy. With an extensive publication record of over 100 scientific papers, his research spans a diverse range of subjects, including the physics of the early universe, dark matter and dark energy, and the search for extraterrestrial life. Notably, his work has contributed to the first precise measurements of the cosmological parameters and to the determination of the geometry of the universe. Beyond academia, Balbi is a prominent science communicator and public speaker. A frequent guest of radio and TV programs, he writes a monthly column in the Italian edition of Scientific American, as well as articles and commentaries for a number of newspapers and magazines (among others, la Repubblica, la Stampa, il Post). His books include "Cercatori di meraviglia" (Rizzoli, 2014), which won the 2015 Italian National Prize for Popular Science Writing; "L’ultimo orizzonte" (UTET, 2019), winner of the 2021 Asimov Prize; and "Su un altro pianeta" (Rizzoli, 2022), which received the 2023 Galileo Literary Prize for Science Popularization.