About: M. Alessandra Papa

Maria Alessandra Papa (born 1967) is an Italian physicist specializing in the observation of gravitational waves. She is a professor of gravitational wave astronomy at Leibniz University Hannover, and a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute). At the Max Planck Institute, she heads the Permanent Independent Research Group on Continuous Gravitational Waves; these are waves expected to be emitted continuously from rapidly rotating neutron stars, unlike the waves that have been detected from black hole and neutron star merger events. She also coordinates the use of the Einstein@Home project for volunteer computing in the search for gravitational waves in LIGO data.