We are delighted to invite you to the 2026 Spring Lecture of the Bologna Astrophysics Campus.
Title: ‘Early galaxies and infant black holes in the primeval Universe"
Details
Speaker: Prof. Roberto Maiolino Fabian, University of Cambridge.
Date: Thursday, 16 April
Time: 11:30 AM
Location: Sala Plenaria Centro Congressi Area della Ricerca CNR-INAF, via Gobetti 101, Bologna
For those who do not hold a CNR badge, in order to access CNR it is necessary to register through this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf6nT55cez-prgA97CzuM1oT9MRy-xQyR9kEsoLmIPoWEvhpg/viewform
Abstract:
With the advent of the James Webb Space Telescope, the past few years have been truly transformational for our understanding of the distant Universe, yielding a plethora of unexpected and groundbreaking results. These include the discovery of very luminous galaxies within the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang, often exhibiting peculiar chemical enrichment patterns. Equally compelling is the identification of a large, previously unknown population of massive black holes in the early Universe, with properties that differ drastically from those of their counterparts at later cosmic epochs. In this lecture, I will provide a brief overview of these discoveries and discuss how they are reshaping our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies and black holes in the early Universe.
Speaker’s short bio:
Roberto Maiolino is a British-Italian astrophysicist and the Professor of Experimental Astrophysics at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, and at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, Cambridge. He is also an Honorary Professor at University College London and a Royal Society Research Professor. From 2016 to 2021, he served as the Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, Cambridge. Maiolino is known for his work on the formation and evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes, particularly in the early Universe. He plays a leading role in major astronomical instrumentation projects, including the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and instruments for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.
We look forward to your participation in this event, which promises to foster a sense of community and stimulate inspiring exchanges of ideas.
