I am a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Milan Bicocca and, until August 2021, a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor at ETH Zurich. Before my current appointments, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California Santa Cruz and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. I devote my main research efforts to make the "dark" Universe and its filamentary network that we call the "Cosmic Web" visible to our optical telescopes using both numerical simulation and observations with the most advanced astronomical instruments on 8-10m class telescopes. If you would like to know more about my past and current research follow this link.

The European Research Council (ERC) has selected my proposal "Unravelling the Cosmic Web with fluorecent emission" (CosmicWeb Project) for a Consolidator Grant of 2M EUR starting in 2020 for 5 years. For more details, see the ETH press release here (Image: European Research Council).

The Swiss National Swiss Foundation has awarded our group two additional years of funding from June 2020 to continue our research activities as a part of the program "From Cosmic Web to Galaxies: Illuminating the Gaseous Link between the Dark and the Bright Universe". See our group page for more information. (Image: Swiss National Science Foundation)

A Press Release on our MUSE discovery of ubiquitous giant nebulae around quasars has been released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on Oct 26th. This is one of our first, exciting results of the MUSE "Guaranteed Time of Observation" projects. For more details, see the scientific article (in press in the Astrophysical Journal) here or the ESO press release here. (Image: S.Cantalupo)

On May 27th, I was appointed by the ETH Board as Assistant Professor of Cosmic Structure Formation, a new start for me at the Institute for Astronomy after one year and half as Research Team Leader (Oberassistent) within the Observational Cosmology group. From June 1st, the new Cosmic Structure Formation group at the IfA will officially start and the first two group members will arrive on July 18th. (Image: ETH Zurich/Lindig)

The Swiss National Swiss Foundation has selected my research proposal "From Cosmic Web to Galaxies: Illuminating the Gaseous Link between the Dark and the Bright Universe" as one of the 40 recipients of the SNSF Professorship grant awards of 2016 in Switzerland. This grant will give me the possibility to build a new research group at ETH Zurich (from June 1st, 2016) that will focus on both theoretical/numerical and observational aspect of cosmic structure formation in the Early Universe. (Image: Swiss National Science Foundation)

The Institute of Physics (IOP) member magazine Physics World selected my discovery of the Slug Nebula - the first direct image of a cosmic web filament - in the Top Ten Breakthroughs in Physics of 2014. For the Physics World press release, see here. The original article was published in Nature on January 19th, 2014. See here for the original UCSC Press Release. (Image: S.Cantalupo)

My latest work on the discovery of an exceptional Lyman-alpha emitting nebula powered by a Quasar at z=2.3, the first direct image of a cosmic web filament, was published in Nature on January 19th, 2014. I named the filament the "Slug Nebula" in honor of the UCSC mascot. See here for the UCSC Press Release. Press coverage included: BBC News, National Geographic, New Scientist, Nature News, Science News, LA Times, Huffington Post, Physics World, CS Monitor , The Economic Times, Business Insider, The Australian , Spiegel (GE), Zeit (GE), Neu Zuercher Zeitung (CH), Le Scienze (IT), ABC (SP), Le Point (FR), La Presse (CA), Russia-24 (RU) , SouthCN (CN) . (Image: S.Cantalupo)

A Press Release of my work on Dark Galaxies fluorescently illuminated by a quasar has been released by the European Southern Observatory and featured on several media broadcaster worldwide including: TIME, CNN, National Geographic, The Economist, BBC News, The Telegraph, NBC News, Die Welt (GE), Liberation (FR), Le Scienze (IT), El Pais (SP) , Folha de Sao Paulo (BR), El Mercurio (CL) . Associated to the PR, I gave an interview for the Kavli Foundation . (Image: S.Cantalupo)