Meet the Team!

The Virgo Collaboration works on the construction, development and operation of the Virgo gravitational wave detector, hosted by the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) in Cascina (near Pisa, Italy).

Today, there are more than 650 Members in the Virgo Collaboration, representing 119 Institutions in 14 different countries. Here you can find a map of the Institutions participating in the Virgo Collaboration.

(The Virgo Collaboration in front of the Central Building. Credits: M. Perciballi/The Virgo Collaboration)

The GWitchHunters Team

Massimiliano Razzano (University of Pisa, Italy)
Physicist, Data Science, WP3 Leader

	I am an associate professor at the Physics Department of the University of Pisa, and my research activity is focused on the multimessenger investigation of the most extreme phenomena in the Universe. I am a member of the Virgo Collaboration and within the REINFORCE team, I am coordinating the development of the citizen science project on gravitational waves. Besides my research interest, I am also a science writer and I am engaged in many activities in science communication and public outreach. With GWitchHunters you will help us to fine-tune our detector and expand our horizon in the Universe!

Emmanuel Chaniotakis (Ellinogermaniki Agogi, Athens, Greece)
Physicist, Researcher, Outreach

	I am a Physicist, work as an education researcher in the R&D department of Ellinogermaniki Agogi School in Greece and I am doing my PhD in Science Education at the Faculty of Educational Studies of the University of Athens. I am a member of the Virgo Collaboration and within the REINFORCE team, I am responsible for the management and implementation of the project’s participatory engagement activities. My main research interest is bringing Gravitational Wave Astronomy to the school classroom and to the general public using innovative pedagogical methodologies.

Francesco Di Renzo (IP2I, Lyon, France)
Physicist, Researcher, Data Science

	I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut de Physique des 2 Infinis de Lyon and a member of the Virgo Collaboration and the REINFORCE team. I am active in the study of noise and the characterization of the Virgo detector, in order to improve its sensitivity to astrophysical signals. I am also involved in the public outreach activities of the University of Pisa and in related citizen science projects. I'm very much looking forward to engaging the public in this GWitchHunters Project for the improvement of our detectors, leading to a better understanding of the Universe surrounding us.

Francesco Fidecaro (University of Pisa, Italy)
Physicist, Researcher, Data Science

	I am currently teaching electromagnetism for second year physics students at our university in Pisa. I started as a particle physicist and have been working on gravitational waves with the Virgo Collaboration for almost three decades. I am involved now in a new project, the Einstein Telescope, that will detect gravitational waves from the very first binary systems in the Universe. During this time I have seen how difficult it is to reduce the noise level in the Virgo interferometer. Transient noise is most insidious as it can mimic true signals and must be recognised to allow us to produce reliable results. By recognising and classifying these transients we will be able to select with greater confidence signals that would be otherwise discarded.

Gary Hemming (European Gravitational Observatory, Italy)
Software Engineer, Researcher, Data Science

	I have been a software developer at the European Gravitational Observatory and member of the Virgo Collaboration for 16 years. The great thing about software development in an experiment like Virgo, is its transversality. This has given me the opportunity to work with teams operating in all sectors of the experiment, as well as in collaboration with colleagues from LIGO in the US and KAGRA, in Japan. Beyond the day to day, I work consistently as part of the Virgo Detector Characterisation and Outreach groups and am the Technical Coordinator of REINFORCE.

Stavros Katsanevas (European Gravitational Observatory, Italy)
Physicist, PI of REINFORCE

	Stavros Katsanevas, coordinator of REINFORCE, is a professor exceptional class at University of Paris, is the director of the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) hosting the Gravitational antenna Virgo in Cascina, Pisa. He has also been director of the Laboratory of Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology in Paris and deputy director of the National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics of CNRS and first chairman of the European Consortium of Astroparticle Physics (APPEC). He has published in particle and astroparticle physics and he is also working at the interface between Physics and Geoscience (Laboratory UnivEarths, Paris), and Art and Science (exhibition Il Ritmo dello Spazio, Museo della Grafica, Pisa). He has received the order of Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite and the Physics Prize of the Academy of Athens for his work on supersymmetry. Sadly, Stavros passed away at the end of November, 2022. He was one of the main driving forces behind the project and the whole REINFORCE initiative. The GWitchHunters team misses him deeply.

Michele Vacatello (University of Pisa, Italy)
Physicist, researcher

	I am a PhD student at the Physics Department of the University of Pisa and a member of the Virgo and ET collaborations. My current research focuses on the study and optimization of the seismic attenuation system of the Einstein Telescope detector, in order to improve its sensitivity at low frequencies. During my Master thesis I have worked on the classification of glitches in Advanced Virgo and experienced how detrimental they can be for the detector. With GWitchHunters, you can help us firsthand in improving the science outcome and make a contribution to the future of gravitational waves detection!