Dr Giorgio Manzoni (馬俊研) is an Italian astrophysicist with expertise in both computational and observational astronomy. He obtained his PhD from Durham University (United Kingdom), where he was affiliated with the Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) and the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy (CEA). As part of the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT), he developed expertise in machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques, applying them alongside galaxy formation models to large-scale simulations of the Universe on the COSMA High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities.
Since his undergraduate studies at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Dr Manzoni has been involved in major international galaxy survey collaborations, including VIPERS and PAUS. For PAUS, he participated in observing campaigns at the William Herschel Telescope. In both projects, he developed simulated lightcones for comparison with observational data to investigate galaxy formation and evolution.
During his first postdoctoral appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at HKUST, under the supervision of Prof. Tao Liu and Prof. George Smoot, he joined the PEARLS collaboration and studied galaxy number counts from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to try to understand the nature of dark matter. He subsequently applied his computational and AI-driven expertise to the field of liquid crystals during his second postdoctoral appointment and Associate Research Scientist position at the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies at HKUST, under the supervision of Prof. Kristiaan Neyts, making use of the HPC4 high-performance computing facility at HKUST.
Dr Manzoni is currently a Lecturer II in the Department of Physics at HKUST. His interests span computational physics, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, astrophysics, and data-driven scientific research .