Dr. Livia Vallini (she/her)

Hello & welcome to my webpage! 

I am a theoretical astrophysicist working on the characterization of the interstellar medium properties of galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization. In particular I develop models to explain how early galaxies, formed when the Universe was less than 1 Gyr old, converted gas into stars, thus producing ionizing photons. This first light suffused the Universe causing its Reionization, the last fundamental phase transition of the cosmic history. Among all ISM phases I am specifically expert in molecular clouds, the birthplaces of stars, and in the photodissociation regions created by the UV radiation from the newly born stellar clusters. 

How did first galaxies form stars? How did the AGN activity influence such a process? These are two of the main questions that I try to answer with my models, that are constantly tested against state-of-art data from the most powerful observational facilities, both on Earth (ALMA) and in space (JWST). 

In my free time I love hiking and visit cold places such as Norway 🇳🇴, Sweden (where I lived for several years) 🇸🇪, and Iceland 🇮🇸.

NEWS

Have a look at the ARAA review  "Photodissociation and X-ray Dominated Regions" that I wrote with M. Wolfire and M. Chevance in 2022. I hope you find it useful.