MSCA IF Fellow: Manuel Arca Sedda


PDFProject: GRACE-BH: Gravitational waves from crowded environments: simulating intermediate-mass black hole formation and evolution with supercomputers


Manuel Arca Sedda

 

MSCA Fellow: Manuel Arca Sedda

UNIPD Supervisor: Michela Mapelli

Department: Physics and Astronomy

Total Contribution: Euro 183.473,28

Project Duration in months: 24

Start Date: 01/03/2022
End Date: 29/02/2024

 

Manuel Arca Sedda is an Italian Astrophysicist. He earned his PhD in Astronomy at the University of Rome Sapienza in January 2014. In his Alma Mater, he also received the BSc (2008) and MSc (2010). In 2015 he worked as a Postdoc for the University of Tor Vergata, while in 2016 he received an independent postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Rome Sapienza. In 2017 he moved to the University of Heidelberg in Germany, where he joined the Astronomisches Rechen Institut under the Collaborative Research Center (SFB881) "The Milky Way System". During this period, he started pursuing research on the formation and evolution of black holes of all sizes. In 2018 he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to pursue the research project "Black Holes at all the scales". In 2019 he joined the laser interferometer space antenna (LISA) consortium and the international astronomical union (IAU). In 2021 he was awarded an MSCA fellowship for the project "GRACE-BH", which aims at tackling the challenge to answer the question "What are the best conditions under which an intermediate-mass black hole forms in a massive stellar system?". Manuel carries out his project at the Department of Physics and Astronomy under the supervision of Prof. Mapelli, ERC grantee. His project will follow the complex phases that undermine the possible development of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) in star clusters. To reach this goal, he will develop the most refined numerical simulations of star clusters on the market, which will feature up to 1 million stars and will represent reliably the clusters that we can admire in our skies.