PhD thesis awards!
My PhD thesis was awarded the 2020 IAU PhD prize for the best thesis in Interstellar Matter and Local Universe & the Gratton Prize for the best Italian thesis in 2018-2020.
Cecilia Bacchini
DARK fellow
DARK - Niels Bohr Institute - University of Copenhagen
Welcome to my personal website! I am a postdoctoral fellow at DARK (Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen). I study the formation and evolution of galaxies, in particular the connection between star formation and cold gas.
I obtained my PhD in 2020 from the University of Bologna (Italy) and the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). Then, I was a postdoct at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Padova (Italy), where I worked in the GASP team studying jellyfish galaxies. In October 2023, I moved to the University of Copenhagen as a DARK fellow.
If you want to know more about me and my scientific activity, explore this website!
Research interests
My research interests revolve around the formation and evolution of galaxies, including:
- kinematics and dynamics of gas and stars in galaxies
- structure of the interstellar medium
- star formation on galactic scales
- turbulence and stellar feedback
- gas accretion and the baryon cycle of galaxies
- scaling relations of disc galaxies in different environments
Highlights
"Laura Bassi series" colloquium
Laura Bassi was the first woman university professor in the western world, teaching physics at University of Bologna in the XVIII century, when women were not allowed to pursue higher education or learned professions. The series of colloquia aims at honoring Bassi's legacy by showcasing the research work of young women in Astronomy.
The volumetric star formation law
Star formation laws tells how many stars form out of a given amount of cold gas, being crucial for galaxy evolution studies. Since galactic discs are seen in projection in the sky-plane, their gas and star formation rate densities are measured on a surface. These quantities have been used for decades to derive a star formation law. However, this surface-based relation has limited validity. I discovered a new star formation law linking the volume densities of the cold gas and the star formation rate, which holds in galaxies with very different masses, from dwarf galaxies to large spirals, with crucial implications for our understanding of star formation.
Supernova-driven turbulence
The origin of turbulent motions of cold gas in galaxies has been an open question for many years. There were several possible sources of turbulence, but it was unclear which is the most efficient. I showed that supernova explosions are the main drivers of turbulence, solving a long-standing conundrum in astrophysics.