Durham University
Dr Simone Scaringi
Associate Professor · Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy
Passionate about understanding: nothing beats a good hypothesis to test, no matter who brings it to the table!
About my research
My work explores the extreme physics of mass transfer and accretion within compact interacting binaries. Because these close stellar systems act as highly dynamic, high-energy laboratories, they allow us to test whether accretion processes are scale-invariant across the cosmos: from forming stars to supermassive black holes.
This core fascination with compact binaries naturally bridges my research into two key frontiers of modern astrophysics. First, as these stellar remnants orbit in tight configurations, they are primary sources of gravitational waves in our Galaxy. I model their gravitational-wave emission for future space missions such as LISA, and use ground-based telescope arrays such as BlackGEM to characterise their electromagnetic counterparts. Second, to process the massive volumes of time-series data generated by these missions and by large sky surveys (including 4MOST and LSST), I develop and apply machine-learning methods to discover and classify rare astronomical transients.
I am an Associate Professor in the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy at Durham University.
Roles and collaborations
- Council Member representing the Astrophysics Working Group for the LISA gravitational-wave observatory
- PI-level member of the BlackGEM wide-field telescope array, dedicated to identifying optical counterparts of gravitational-wave mergers
- UK affiliate member of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)
- UK PI coordinating the Science Data Centre planning for the proposed GRINTA gamma-ray transient mission
Career
I have previously held faculty positions at Texas Tech University (USA) and the University of Canterbury (New Zealand). Earlier in my career I held a Humboldt Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, an FWO Pegasus Marie Curie Fellowship at the Institute of Astronomy at KU Leuven in Belgium, and a postdoctoral research position in the Department of Astrophysics at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
I completed my BSc in Mathematics with Astronomy, followed by my MPhil and PhD in the Astronomy Group at the University of Southampton.
