Physics PhD Research Day 2026 - UniTS

Thursday 28 May 2026, 09:00 → 18:00 Europe/Rome

Physics PhD Research Day 2026

28th May 2026

Physics Department, University of Trieste, lecture room A

 

The Research Day, in its inaugural edition, is a workshop intended to showcase the state-of-the-art research carried out at the Department of Physics through presentations delivered by the second-year PhD students of the PhD Course in Physics.

In the coming years, the workshop will cyclically cover all the main research areas active within the Department, thus offering a broad overview of the scientific activities carried out by its research community.

The programme will also include a poster session by first-year PhD students, who will present their new research projects.

The entire physics community is warmly invited to attend. In particular, Master’s students in Physics are strongly encouraged to participate, as the workshop represents an excellent opportunity to learn about the research conducted at the Department and to become acquainted with its main scientific directions.

Please register via the following link by May 15th: https://forms.gle/PW2Lr7TEqoVBgJhf6

09:15 → 09:30 Welcome

Conveners: Angelo Bassi (University of Trieste and INFN), Giacomo Contin (University of Trieste and INFN), Giuseppe Della Ricca (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

09:30 → 10:30 Morning 1

Convener: Michela De Col

09:30 Supermassive Black Holes: "camels" in the Sky

Supermassive black holes can power some of the brightest and most energetic sources in the Universe. In Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs), matter accreting onto the central black hole can launch relativistic jets whose emission is observed across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays.

A useful way to visualize their broadband emission is through the characteristic two-hump shape of the spectral energy distribution, making some AGNs look like a "camel" in the sky.

In this talk, I will introduce how multiwavelength observations help us investigate the physical processes taking place in AGN jets, with a particular focus on the role of the Fermi-LAT space telescope in studying their gamma-ray emission.

Speaker: Ermes Aviano

09:50 Bernardinis Lorenzo

10:10 Gravitational Waves: Why They Matter and How We Study Weak Signals

Gravitational waves provide a unique way to study some of the most extreme phenomena in the Universe, offering access to astrophysical processes that may be hidden or only partially visible through traditional electromagnetic observations. Their observation has already transformed modern astrophysics, and future progress will depend not only on detector sensitivity, but also on our ability to extract information from weak, uncertain, or poorly modeled signals. In this presentation, I will first outline why gravitational-wave research is important today, from a physical, astrophysical, and methodological point of view. I will then present my recent PhD work, which focuses on the study of subthreshold gravitational-wave candidates and on the development of tools to account for detector response, sky localization, and statistical biases in population analyses. These activities include the use of statistical tests applied to sky distributions of candidate events and broader studies of network performance for present and future interferometers. I will also briefly discuss related work on PycWB, a modern and modular framework for unmodeled gravitational-wave searches.

Speaker: Davide Di Piero

10:30 → 11:15 Coffee break / Poster session

11:15 → 12:35 Morning 2

Convener: Samuele Cattaruzzi (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

11:15 Fontana Luca

11:35 Dottorini Sara

11:55 Giraldin Carlo

12:15 Gitton Maxime

12:35 → 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 → 15:20 Afternoon 1

14:00 Martinelli Riccardo

14:20 Mahmood Muhammad Saad

14:40 Santaniello Antonio

15:00 Sbernadori Sara

15:20 → 16:05 Coffee break / Poster session

16:05 → 17:25 Afternoon 2

16:05 Sgatti Lapo

16:25 Cannito Stefano

Speaker: Stefano Cannito (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

16:45 Tognocchi Francesco

17:05 Zorzenon Massimo

17:25 → 18:00 Close-up