Laura Venuti

Education: PhD in Astrophysics, obtained in 2015 at the Université Grenoble Alpes, France, jointly with the Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy

Research Interests: Astronomy, Star Formation

Laura Venuti is an astronomer in the field of star formation. In her work, she combines photometric and spectroscopic data from ground-based and space-borne observing facilities to infer the dynamics of interaction of young stellar objects in clusters with their protoplanetary disks and the surrounding environment. She studies the variability signatures produced by young star-disk systems across the wavelength spectrum (ultraviolet, optical, infrared) over different timescales (hours, days, months, and years) to identify the underlying physical drivers that govern their early evolution (mass accretion from the disk onto the star, stellar magnetic activity, disk dust dynamics).

Laura completed her PhD degree in Astrophysics in Grenoble, France, in late 2015. Her postdoctoral experience includes research activities in Italy (Palermo) and Germany (Tübingen). In late 2018, she moved to the US, where she joined the Ames Research Center as a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow, after a short stay as a Visiting Scholar at the Cornell University. Laura is a Research Scientist at the SETI Institute since mid-2021.