Dr. Andreas Elsäßer, Dr. Riccardo Giovanni Urso / Lecture & fulldome projection / 90 min
Dr. Riccardo Giovanni Urso | Credit Photo: Federica Previtera
Dr. Riccardo Giovanni Urso is a researcher at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, INAF-Astrophysical Observatory of Catania. Dr. Urso is interested in astrochemistry and astrobiology and he studies how matter and the building blocks of life formed at the dawn of the Solar System.
His studies are based on laboratory experiments to simulate the chemical processes that happen when a star and its planets form. These processes are at the origin of the Sun, the Earth and the other planets and he investigates the formation of materials to seek for “the seeds of life” in his samples. He also uses laboratory data to interpret astronomical observations of star-forming regions that resemble the young Solar System and data of space missions to comets and asteroids.
Dr. Urso received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Nanotechnology from the University of Catania (Italy) in 2018. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow for the French Space Agency (CNES) at the Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Insitut d’Astrophysique Spatiale (France) and in 2020, he joined the Experimental Biophysics and Space Science team at Freie Universitaet Berlin as an Einstein International Postdoctoral Fellow. Since 2022, Dr. Urso is an INAF researcher.