Violette Impellizzeri

Violette Impellizzeri
Violette Impellizzeri (right) receiving an award from the Chilean Senate
Born	15 August 1977 Palermo, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Alma mater	University of Bristol Max Planck Institute für Radioastronomie
Occupation(s)	Astronomer, astrophysicist and university teacher

Violette Impellizzeri (born August 15, 1977) is an Italian astronomer, astrophysicist and professor.

Biography

Violette Impellizzeri was born in Saronno, a comune in the Province of Varese, Italy. She completed her primary and secondary education in Alcamo, Sicily, before relocating with her family to Karlsruhe, Germany, where her father was employed as a teacher.

Impellizzeri earned her European Baccalaureate at the European School of Karlsruhe. In 1995, she enrolled at the University of Bristol, where she obtained a master's degree in physics. She later pursued a doctorate in astrophysics at the Max Planck Institute für Radioastronomie in Bonn, Germany.

Following her doctoral studies, Impellizzeri undertook postdoctoral research at the University of Virginia. She also worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) for three years, focusing on physical cosmology and megamasers as part of the Megamaser Cosmology Project (MCP).

Since 2011, she has worked at ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) in Chile as an astronomer. In October 2020, she moved back to Europe to work as a program manager with Allegro (ALMA Local Expertise Group) and the European ALMA Regional Center (ARC) node in the Netherlands, hosted by Leiden Observatory. She currently teaches at Leiden University.

Activity

Violette Impellizzeri focused on Active Galactic Nuclei during her doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. As part of her research, she conducted a series of observations using the Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope to detect water masers (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) in distant galaxies. Her efforts led to the discovery, which was later confirmed by observations made with the Very Large Array Radio Telescope in New Mexico, operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The findings were published in Nature. This contributed to the study of the universe's expansion, and contributed to implications for the calculation of the Hubble constant, which measures the relationship between the distance and velocity of galaxies. This calculation is a key factor in understanding the rate of cosmic expansion.

In 2007, while at the University of Virginia, Impellizzeri was recruited by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) to contribute to the Megamaser Cosmology Project (MCP), a significant cosmological research initiative. She coordinated research efforts at the Green Bank Telescope in Virginia, integrating these with observations made using the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) system. Impellizzeri worked on the project for three years and continued to collaborate on it for the following ten years.

Impellizzeri joined the Atacama Cosmology Telescope project (the largest radio telescope in the world, at an altitude of 5 km) as an NRAO astronomer tasked with the integration of the VLBI observations within the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) (under the title of friend of VLBI). She participated in data integration with other remote telescopes, where a distance of 10,000 kilometers can be leveraged as if the observations were made by one giant telescope with a 10,000 km diameter.

In 2017, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) commenced observations aimed at capturing an image of a black hole. The project successfully produced the first direct visual evidence of a black hole, specifically the one at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, situated 56 million light-years away from Earth. This supermassive black hole is estimated to have a mass of 6.5 billion times that of our Sun.

Telescopes which contributed to this image included the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), APEX, the 30-meter IRAM telescope in Grenoble, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Alfonso Serrano Telescope, the Submillimeter Array, the Submillimeter Telescope, and the South Pole Telescope.

Honors

• Earned the title of "Woman of Stars" and published a paper in Nature on the discovery of the most ancient water in the universe;
• 11 August 2018: Awarded the Tablet Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary Clubs for her contributions to the diffusion of Italian culture;
• 18 April 2019: the Chilean government awarded the astronomer with a medal, as official recognition for the work done in the exploration of the black hole.
• 12 August 2019: Received a Tablet from the Mayor of Alcamo in recognition of her work in scientific research.
• 2020: Together with the other astrophysicists who realized the photo of the black hole, she was awarded with the Breakthrough Prize (2020).
• 11 August 2021: Yearly Prize by the Kiwanis club of Alcamo, with the following motivation: To Violette Impellizzeri, astronomer with an international fame, for her dedication for the study of the mysteries of universe and for the safeguard of environment.
• 28 November 2022: KHMW Outreach Award for her project ALMA for Leiden.

See also

• Atacama Large Millimeter Array
• Breakthrough Prize
• Leiden University

Sources

• "Violette, la donna delle stelle venuta da Alcamo". 15 February 2015. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
• "Scienziata alcamese, in Olanda, a capo di gruppo di astronomi". 6 May 2021. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "Violette Impellizzeri, l'astronoma cacciatrice del buco nero sognato da bambina". 19 April 2019. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "Astrofisica? Può essere semplice. Violette Impellizzeri lo sa". 16 October 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "Allegro, the European ALMA Regional Center node in the Netherlands". Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "About us". Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "Violette Impellizzeri Program Manager Allegro". Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "L'astronoma siciliana che in Cile svela i segreti delle antiche galassie". 10 December 2014. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "Black Hole Imaged For First Time By Event Horizon Telescope". 15 April 2017. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "La scienziata alcamese Violette Impellizzeri premiata dal governo del Cile". 19 April 2019. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "First image of black hole released in Chile". Archived from the original on 12 April 2019. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "Winners Of The 2020 Breakthrough Prize In Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics And Mathematics Announced". Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "Alcamo, Premio dell'anno kiwaniano. A Violette Impellizzeri prestigioso riconoscimento". 12 August 2021. Retrieved 12 August 2021.

External links

• "Alcamo, l'astronoma Violette Impellizzeri in videoconferenza dal Cile". YouTube. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "Dr. Violette Impellizzeri". 30 June 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "Observatorio ALMA". Facebook. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "Astronomers Capture the First Image of a Black Hole". Retrieved 6 June 2021.
• "KHMW Outreach Award". 5 December 2022. Retrieved 14 December 2022.
• "Violette Impellizzeri". Leiden University. Retrieved 25 September 2024.