Dr. Marica Valentini

About me

I obtained my PhD in 2010 at the University of Padova. In the years 2010-2013 I worked as Post-Doc at the University of Liege, the the ASTA team, where I had the unique opportunity to familiarize myself with asteroseismology, the study the internal structure of stars via their "vibrations". It was in those years that my team, for the first time, used asteroseismology for Galactic Archaeology investigations, since stellar oscillations can provide the age of a star with unprecedented precision, and the very precise seismic surface gravity (log(g)) helps to improve the measurement of element abundances from stellar spectra.

In 2013 I joined AIP, to use asteroseismology as a tool for Galactic Archaeology in large spectroscopic surveys. In 2019 I obtained a DFG grant (project number 428473034) for continuing my Galactic Archaeology investigations using asteroseismology, spectroscopy, and Gaia data.

I am member of some of the most important (past, present, and future) spectroscopic surveys, such as RAVE, Gaia-ESO Survey, APOGEE, SDSS-V MWM, WEAVE, and 4MOST. My role is to use red giants with seismic observations as validators/calibrators for spectroscopic pipelines (thanks to very precise seismic log(g)) and as tracers of the structure, history, and chemistry of the Galaxy. For my analysis I use seismic information measured from data collected by the CoRoT, Kepler, K2, TESS space missions. I am also involved in the future PLATO and HAYDN missions.

Among many projects, I am leading 4MOST IWG3 - Pipeline calibrations Internal Working group, the ISSI International Team "Astero-CatS: Stellar catalog for Spectroscopic Surveys", and the spectroscopic follow-up of seismic red giant in 4MOST.

When not studying Red Giants I do running, archery, and I study wines.

Useful links:

RAVE

Gaia ESO Survey

WEAVE

4MOST

SDSS-IV - APOGEE

SDSS-V

ISSI

PLATO

HAYDN