Elisa Resconi (born 1 December 1971 in

Brescia Brescia (, ; ; or ; ) is a city and (municipality) in the region of Lombardy, in Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Lake Garda, Garda and Lake Iseo, Iseo. With a population of 199,949, it is the se ...

, Italy) is an Italian astroparticle physicist and the Chair of

Experimental Physics Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and o ...

with Cosmic Particles at the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; ) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Established in 1868 by King Ludwig II ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. Her research concentrates on high-energy

neutrino astronomy Neutrino astronomy is a branch of astronomy that gathers information about astronomical objects by observing and studying neutrinos emitted by them with the help of neutrino detectors in special Earth observatories. It is an emerging field in as ...

and developing advanced detection technologies for

cosmic particle Cosmic rays or astroparticles are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Sol ...

Academic career

From 1989 to 1995, Resconi studied physics at the

University of Milan The University of Milan (; ), officially abbreviated as UNIMI, or colloquially referred to as La Statale ("the State niversity), is a public university, public research university in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Eu ...

. She earned her PhD from the

University of Genoa The University of Genoa () is a public research university. It is one of the largest universities in Italy and it is located in the city of Genoa, on the Italian Riviera in the Liguria region of northwestern Italy. The original university was fou ...

in 2001 under the supervision of G. Manuzio and R. Raghavan. From 2002 to 2005, she worked as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at

DESY DESY, short for Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (English: ''German Electron Synchrotron''), is a national research centre for fundamental science located in Hamburg and Zeuthen near Berlin in Germany. It operates particle accelerators used to ...

Zeuthen, Germany, and from 2005 to 2011, she led an Emmy Noether research group at the

Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics The Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik ("MPI for Nuclear Physics" or MPIK for short) is a research institute in Heidelberg, Germany. The institute is one of the 80 institutes of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Max Planck Society), an independent, ...

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

, Germany. After serving as a guest professor at the

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

in 2011, she moved to the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and held a Heisenberg Professorship from 2013 to 2016. In 2018, she was appointed Liesel Beckmann Distinguished Professor for

Experimental physics Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and o ...

at TUM. Since 2017, Resconi has been the spokesperson of the DFG Collaborative Research Center 1258 (SFB1258) "

Neutrino A neutrino ( ; denoted by the Greek letter ) is an elementary particle that interacts via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small ('' -ino'') that i ...

s and

Dark Matter In astronomy, dark matter is an invisible and hypothetical form of matter that does not interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter is implied by gravity, gravitational effects that cannot be explained by general relat ...

Astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline, James Keeler, said, astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the ...

and

Particle Physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...

". In 2022, she received an ERC Advanced Grant for the project ‘Neutrinoshot'. In 2023, Resconi was elected the spokesperson of the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE), an international initiative to construct a high-energy

neutrino detector A neutrino detector is a physics apparatus which is designed to study neutrinos. Because neutrinos only weakly interact with other particles of matter, neutrino detectors must be very large to detect a significant number of neutrinos. Neutrino ...

that instruments the waters of the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. Together with Thomas K. Gaisser and Ralph Engel, Resconi is author of the book ''Cosmic Rays and Particle Physics'' (2nd edition, 2016).

Research

Elisa Resconi's research is focused on the detection and analysis of high-energy neutrinos, elementary particles that offer insights into the universe's most energetic astrophysical phenomena. As a member of the IceCube Collaboration, she has been particularly involved in studies linking neutrino emissions to the AGN

NGC 1068 Messier 77 (M77), also known as NGC 1068 or the Squid Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus. It is about away from Earth, and was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780, who originally described it as a nebula. Méchain ...

, a nearby

Seyfert galaxy Seyfert galaxies are one of the two largest groups of active galaxies, along with quasar host galaxies. They have quasar-like nuclei (very luminous sources of electromagnetic radiation that are outside of our own galaxy) with very high surface ...

. This discovery provides critical evidence for AGN as potential sources of high-energy cosmic neutrinos and highlights the role of neutrinos in understanding the universe's most extreme environments. She advocates for developing innovative neutrino observatories and advanced detection techniques, complementing existing high-energy neutrino observatories like

IceCube The IceCube Neutrino Observatory (or simply IceCube) is a neutrino observatory developed by the University of Wisconsin–Madison and constructed at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. The project is a recognized CERN experim ...

and

KM3NeT The Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope, or KM3NeT, is a European research infrastructure located at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. It hosts water Cherenkov radiation, Cherenkov neutrino astronomy, neutrino telescopes designed to detect and st ...

The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE)

Resconi's recent work centers on the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE), an international collaboration to establish a large-scale neutrino observatory in the Pacific Ocean. The experiment seeks to deploy an array of detectors at great depths to capture high-energy neutrinos with unprecedented precision using the subsea infrastructure of the NEPTUNE observatory of

Ocean Networks Canada Ocean Networks Canada is a world-leading research and ocean observing facility hosted and owned by the University of Victoria, and managed by the not-for profit ONC Society. ONC operates unparalleled observatories in the deep ocean and coastal ...

(ONC). P-ONE aims at addressing key unanswered questions in

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline, James Keeler, said, astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the ...

, such as the origin of

cosmic ray Cosmic rays or astroparticles are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the ...

s and the properties of

dark matter In astronomy, dark matter is an invisible and hypothetical form of matter that does not interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter is implied by gravity, gravitational effects that cannot be explained by general relat ...

Book

References

External links

*https://www.professoren.tum.de/en/resconi-elisa *https://portal.fis.tum.de/de/persons/elisa-resconi *https://www.ph.nat.tum.de/cosmic-particles/experimental-physics-with-cosmic-particles/ *https://www.sfb1258.de *https://www.pacific-neutrino.org *Scientific publications of Elisa Resconi on https://inspirehep.net/authors/1023683 {{DEFAULTSORT:Resconi, Elisa 1971 births Academic staff of the Technical University of Munich Italian experimental physicists 21st-century Italian physicists Italian women physicists 21st-century Italian women scientists Living people University of Genoa alumni University of Milan alumni