Luca Comisso

Luca is a plasma astrophysicist with research interests bridging high-energy astrophysics, plasma physics, and astroparticle physics. He combines analytical calculations with large-scale numerical simulations on supercomputers to investigate the emission processes and messengers—such as electromagnetic radiation, cosmic rays, and neutrinos—from a range of astrophysical sources. These include accretion flows around black holes, jets from active galactic nuclei (AGNs), gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe), tidal disruption events (TDEs), and other potential sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). His research is supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy. 

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.