Giuseppina Nigro

I am a theoretical and computational astrophysicist, and my main research interests are astrophysical plasmas, astrophysical dynamos, the solar coronal heating problem, and magneto-fluid turbulence.

I am PI for the MELODY (MultiscalE soLar cOnvective DYnamo) research project about stellar magnetic dynamo and magneto-convection. MELODY project has received funding (150K euros) from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) under the YoungResearchersSEAL program supporting researchers who won the Seal of Excellence following their participation in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships calls within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program.

I was also the PI of the research project: 'Study on Magnetic Dynamo Effect', for which I was awarded an Italian research grant. The grant (64k euros) supported my research from 2011 to 2014. During these years, I spent long periods as a guest scientist in different international institutions, such as HZDR in Dresden and Leibniz-Institut fur Astrophysik Institute in Potsdam (Germany), and the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago (USA). After this period, I was hired as a researcher at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago.

Between 2015 and 2022 and between 2009 and 2011, I was a post-doc researcher at the University of Calabria, where I studied magnetic dynamos and solar coronal loops using numerical and theoretical approaches.

Between 2006 and 2009, I was a post-doc at the US Naval Research Lab, Space Science Division (Solar Theory Branch), in Washington DC (USA). During my post-doctoral position at the US Naval Research Lab, I worked on the solar coronal heating problem. This research aimed to investigate plasma dynamics in a solar coronal loop, considering tearing-mode secondary instabilities numerically described by a 3D incompressible visco-resistive MHD code. Furthermore, my Ph.D., obtained in 2005 at the University of Calabria, was dedicated to developing a coronal loop model in the Reduced MHD formalism and low dimensional models to describe magnetic dynamos.