Marco Pierbattista

PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Where I come from

About myself

Since I have memory I’ve always been fascinated by “why things are as they appear”. I’ve always been curious about everything that happened around me, I’ve always tried to search for a deeper explanation of what I used to sense. Growing up in a house lost in the countryside gave me the opportunity to experience the Nature as a pioneer: to taste the grass, to observe the organization of the insect colonies, the structure of the leaves, to understand the seasonal recurrence of the constellation patterns on a perfectly dark sky.

I was nearly eleven years old when I asked my parents for a telescope. At that time I was already reading about astronomy since some time and I managed to collect books and magazines about Astronomy; my mother used to buy me a monthly astronomy magazine and VHS with explanations of the most fascinating astronomical phenomena. When my telescope arrived it was like I’ve always had it and I started to discover the Universe. I discovered the moon, Jupiter, Saturn’s satellites and rings, I used to wake up at 5 in the morning to observe Venus and to note on a book all details of my observations. I discovered that Jupiter has more than 4 satellites, the red surface of Mars, I observed the bright clouds of Venus, the green ray of the raising sun, the moon craters. I was a scientist before to know what a scientist is.

My passion for science, in particular for Astronomy, led me through the most important steps of my life and brought me around the world. I graduated in Astronomy at Bologna University and from there I moved to Sardinia to work on my master thesis about Pulsars. After defending my Master’s thesis in December 2006, in February 2007 I moved to Paris where a few months later I started a PhD in Pulsar Astrophysics. After defending my PhD thesis in December 2010 I worked for a while in Paris and after about 5 years living in France, I relocated to Milan, Italy, for a post doc contract. After Milan I moved to Poland, Toruń first and to Lublin after, for other post docs and it was in Poland that I realized that being a scientist does not require to be a researcher. 

During my research career I had the possibility to work with and learn an incredible amount of things from excellent scientists in many different places of the world. I traveled to many places in the USA, in Canada, Japan, Russia, Namibia, almost all the European countries. I lived in many cities and I met an incredible amount of incredible people. I could experience that passion for science and the impulse to explore the World are two of the primary human instincts through which progress is achieved.

In Warsaw, Poland, I quit academic research and I joined industry as Data Scientist for Accenture. In Poland I lived for 7 years, I married my wife Patrycja and we adopted our dog, Frania but in 2021 we made the decision to relocated to Switzerland.

If I look at my past I see nothing else than myself now. I still have the same approach to things, the same curiosity, the same will to learn, discover, understand, travel who knows where next. I am a scientist, still ignoring what a scientist is

Scientific publications and patents

Here there’s a list of all scientific researches I have conceived and developed and that I have contributed to develop both as collaborator of scientific researches promoted by colleagues and as a member of the FERMI space telescope international collaboration.

Refereed

I have participated to Pulsar science research by publishing 8 main authorship papers, 5 of which written by myself and related to studies managed by myself and 3 as co-author

NASA ADS Library

Non Refereed

As a Pulsar scientist, I have presented my researches to many international conference, seminars, and schools and in 5 cases my contributions were published as conference proceedings

NASA ADS Library

Collaboration

As a member of the Fermi space telescope collaboration, I have signed 47 papers describing major first results of the Fermi experiment, made possible by the collective work of the team

NASA ADS Library

Patents

Right after joining industry, I have conceived a Monte Carlo models to predict the size of the rock fragments after explosions in open-pit mines. The solution has been recently patented

Link to US patent

My cultural background

Education

  • Master in Astronomy, October 2000-December 2006 Astronomy Department of the Bologna University, Italy. The diploma (laurea) includes a master thesis based on the work done from April 2006 to December 2006 at the Astronomical Observatory of Cagliari (OAC) in Sardinia, Italy. Master thesis title: “Implementazione di codici per la ricerca di pulsar” (Implementation of codes for pulsar searches), defended, cum laude, on December 15th 2006 at the University of Bologna.

Theses and curriculum

Below, the title pages of my Master’s thesis and PhD thesis are shown with a link to the respective PDF files. For a complete and updated version of my CV, please, reach me out

Master’s thesis

The thesis, carried out at the Cagliari Astroniomical Observatory, focusses on implementiung a suit of c-shell scripts to implement radio Pulsar searches in data collected by the Parkes radio telescopes in Australia

Open the PDF file

PhD thesis

My PhD project focusses on the studi of the collective population characteristics, of the light’curve morphology, and of the space orientation of the gamma-ray pulsars observed and discovered by the FERMI gamma-ray space telescope

Open the PDF file

Curriculum

Here a snapshot of my curriculum updated at Jan 2022. For an updated and complete version feel free to reach me out