Luca is a plasma astrophysicist with interests in a variety of research areas including particle acceleration in high-energy astrophysical sources, relativistic plasmas around black holes, plasma physics of accretion disks and jets, radiative properties of compact objects, generation and amplification of magnetic fields, plasma turbulence, magnetic reconnection, and high performance computing.
Prior to moving to Columbia University, Luca was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences of Princeton University and a long-term visitor in the Theory Department of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in plasma physics from the Polytechnic University of Turin. Before pursuing his passion for physics, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering and a master’s degree in space engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan.