Marta Volonteri


Marta Volonteri is an Italian astrophysicist known for her research on the formation and evolution of the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. She is a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research, affiliated with the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, and Professor of Black Hole Formation and Growth at the University of Amsterdam.

Education and career

Volonteri was a student at the University of Milan, where she earned a laurea in physics in 1999, and completed a Ph.D. in 2003.
After postdoctoral research positions at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 2002 to 2004, and at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge from 2004 to 2006, she joined the University of Michigan as an assistant professor in 2007, and was tenured there as an associate professor in 2010. In 2012 she moved to her present position as a director of research for the CNRS.
She was named as Professor of Black Hole Formation and Growth, by special appointment, at the University of Amsterdam in 2019.

Recognition

Volonteri received the CNRS Silver Medal in 2022, "for her studies of massive black holes located at the center of galaxies using numerical simulations". She was also the 2022 recipient of the Émilie Du Châtelet Prize of the Société Française de Physique.
In January 2026 Ms. Volonteri was nominated as one of the 18 new members of the very prestigious Académie des sciences

Selected publications