Buonanno, Alessandra

Foreign Fellows

Elected: 2023

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Alessandra Buonanno is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute). She studied theoretical physics in Pisa, and held faculty positions in Paris and at the University of Maryland, where she became full professor in 2010. She is a Principal Investigator of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and a member of the LISA Consortium Board. Buonanno is interested in understanding the origin and nature of black holes and neutron stars in our universe through the observation of gravitational waves. Her research on waveform modeling has been instrumental in the detection and physical interpretation of gravitational waves from binary black holes and neutron stars with LIGO and Virgo detectors. Buonanno pioneered and greatly contributed to the successful synergistic approach of combining numerical-relativity techniques with analytical-relativity methods with the goal of developing the most accurate and efficient waveform models for compact-object coalescences. For her contributions to gravitational-wave research, she was awarded several prizes, including the 2018 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz prize – the most prestigious research prize in Germany. In 2021 she was co-awarded the Galileo Galilei Medal, the Dirac Medal and the Balzan Prize. She received the 2022 Tomalla Prize for her outstanding work on gravitational-wave physics. In 2021, she has been elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, of the US National Academy of Sciences, and of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Buonanno is a Fellow of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, and of the American Physical Society. She holds a research professorship at the University of Maryland, and honorary professorships at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and at the University of Potsdam.