Michela Mapelli is Associate Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy Galileo Galilei.

She obtained her Master in Physics (cum laude) from the University of Milano Bicocca (2003) and her PhD in Astrophysics from SISSA (2006). Before joining the University of Padova, she was postdoctoral fellow (Forschungskredit fellow) at the University of Zurich (2007-2009), senior postdoctoral fellow at the University of Milano Bicocca (2009-2011), permanent research staff at INFN Padova (2011-2018) and fixed-term full professor at the University of Innsbruck (2017-2018). Her current work focuses on the formation channels of merging compact objects, to understand their contribution to gravitational waves. Her studies on the mass spectrum of stellar black holes have provided an essential clue to interpret the first direct detections of gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo interferometers. Michela Mapelli has published more than 90 peer-reviewed papers on high-impact factor journals (more than 40 of which as first author). Her PhD Thesis was awarded both the Gratton and the Tacchini Prizes. In 2015, she has been awarded the MERAC PRIZE for the Best Early Career European Researcher in Theoretical Astrophysics, by the European Astronomical Society. She has obtained several national and international grants, including a Future in Research FIRB grant (2012), a MERAC grant (2015) and an Austrian FWF Stand-Alone grant (2017). In 2017, she has been awarded an ERC consolidator grant about “The demography of black hole binaries in the era of gravitational wave astronomy” (DEMOBLACK).