Alessandra Buonanno

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. 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. She is an elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, of the US National Academy of Sciences, of the Italian National Academy of Sciences, and of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.