Gaia-ESO Survey at Arcetri

Team Members
Sofia Randich Sofia Randich
Director of Research
Sofia is a Co-PI of the Gaia-ESO survey, and therefore plays a key role in the organisation and running of the survey. She is also responsible for the open cluster observations within Gaia-ESO, from initial selection to final monitoring.
Research Interests: Research interests: Sofia's scientific activities focus on a variety of topics, including cluster formation and evolution, the evolution of stellar properties, the understanding of internal mixing in stars, the formation and evolution of the MW thin disc, planet searches in clusters. Sofia is member of the Gaia Science Team, and of the science teams of Weave and MOONS. She is also member of the steering committee of the TESS working group on star clusters.
Luca Bravi Luca Bravi
PhD Student
Luca has been involved in the Gaia-ESO Survey since the end of 2015 as a PhD student. His supervisors are Sofia Randich and Germano Sacco. He works in synergy with his supervisors and the other members of Gaia-ESO Arcetri working group to obtain new results with the Gaia-ESO data.
Research Interests: During his Master's Degree, Luca studied the interactions between radio and X-ray properties in radio mini halos present in galaxy clusters. Now, he is focused on the study of star cluster dynamics with Gaia-ESO Survey. In the next years, he will combining the Gaia-ESO data with the Gaia ones to produce a multi-dimensional studies of star clusters.
Rachel Curran Rachel Curran
Gaia & Gaia-ESO Survey Outreach
Rachel is in charge of outreach events for the Gaia ESO survey and Gaia projects at the Arcetri Observatory. She organises and runs public open evenings, giving lectures and using the telescopes to explain the Gaia mission and the Gaia-ESO survey. She also writes press releases, and is responsible for the webpages.
Research Interests: Rachel has broad interests in research, and has published in areas including High- and Low-mass Star formation, Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and Quasi-Stellar Objects (QSOs). She is an expert in Submillimetre imaging polarimetry, and has many years experience in using high-resolution optical and near-infrared spectroscopy and spectroastrometry. She has a keen interest in telescopes and instrumentation, data reduction and analysis, and public outreach.
Elena Franciosini Elena Franciosini
Researcher
Elena is one of the Survey builders, and the Arcetri node representative for WG12. She is part of the Arcetri UVES data reduction team, together with Germano and Lorenzo M.; in particular, she is in charge of the combination of all the spectra obtained for each star into a single co-added spectrum, and of the derivation of the final radial and rotational velocities. She is also involved in the derivation of lithium abundances for WG12 (analysis of pre-main sequence stars), WG10 and WG11 (analysis of Giraffe and UVES FGK stars), and in the derivation of temperatures using line-depth ratios for the joint GES-COROT project.
Research Interests: During her career, Elena has been involved in the study of stellar activity both in single stars and in open clusters at radio and X-ray wavelengths. In the last few years, her research has been mostly dedicated to the study of lithium abundances in young and old open clusters.
Laura Magrini Laura Magrini
Researcher
Laura is the coordinator of the Node of Spectral analysis EPInArBo (ESO, Padova, Indiana, Arcetri, Bologna) that analyses both WG11 and WG10 spectra. She is also a member of WG15 (homogenisation Working Group and a member of WG4.
Research Interests: In the last few years, Laura has been working on several projects concerning the composition of Galactic open clusters and its implication on the process of formation and evolution of the Milky Way. Specifically, she has been working on the abundances of neutron-capture elements in the different Galactic populations, and the ages of Open Clusters through isochrone fitting.
Lorenzo Morbidelli Lorenzo Morbidelli
Researcher
After the approval of the Gaia-ESO Survey (2011) Lorenzo's task (in collaboration with G. G. Sacco and E. Franciosini) has been to implement the ESO pipeline on the local system in Arcetri. A number of problems had been identified and solved in this phase. Since the beginning of the observations Lorenzo's task is to process the raw data taken by the UVES spectrograph in order to produce wavelength-calibrated spectra and perform a first-look quality control. To this purpose a system of scripts has been prepared. To comply with changes in instrumental and calibration setup and to solve pipeline problems the scripts need to be regularly updated and modified. The pipeline itself had to be corrected in many ways. This work has been performed in collaboration with the ESO software team.
Research Interests: In addition to Lorenzo's work within the Gaia-ESO survey, he has also been processing and reducing ESO historical data taken with UVES spectrograph starting with its commissioning (around the year 2003). This archive is at present comparable in size with the main Gaia-ESO Survey.
Elena Pancino Elena Pancino
Researcher
Elena has participated in the preparation phases of the survey since the end of 2010, with massive tests of abundance analysis on simulated spectra, to identify the best observation strategy of field stars. She coordinated the Bologna abundance analysis node until 2014. She leads the standard and calibrations working group.
Research Interests: Apart from her interest in resolved stellar populations, especially open and globular clusters and dwarf galaxies in the local group, Elena is an expert in the abundance analysis of high resolution stellar spectra. She also participates to the Gaia Mission DPAC (Data Processing and Analysis Consortium), leading the group that is preparing the large grid of spectrophotometric standard stars for the absolute flux calibration of Gaia photometry and spectra since 2006.
Veronica Roccatagliata Veronica Roccatagliata
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Veronica is working on spectral analysis of the UVES data along with quality control.
Research Interests: Veronica has previously worked on Young stellar clusters and circumstellar discs.
Germano Sacco Germano Sacco
Researcher
Germano has been involved in the Gaia-ESO Survey since the beginning of the observations at the end of the 2011. Together with Lorenzo Morbidelli and Elena Franciosini, he is involved in the initial data processing of all data taken with the UVES spectrograph, which is entirely carried out at Arcetri. Specifically, his duties include the quality control of the spectra, the derivation of radial velocities and projected rotational velocities, and the management of the internal releases of spectra. He is also a member of the working group in charge of the analysis of Pre-main sequence stars and a builder of the Survey.
Research Interests: During his career, Germano has studied several open issues in the field of star formation using both multi-wavelength observations and numerical modeling. In the last years he mostly focused in studies of cluster dynamics with the Gaia-ESO Survey. In the future, he will devote his efforts to combining Gaia-ESO and Gaia data to move his analysis into a multi-dimensional domain.
Lorenzo Spina Lorenzo Spina
Post-Doctoral Researcher
During his PhD (2011 - 2014) at the University of Florence, Lorenzo was deeply involved in the Gaia-ESO Survey. His duties included the selection of targets and the telescope configuration for the observations of pre-main-sequence clusters and the analysis of the UVES spectra collected in these young stellar associations. Since January 2015, Lorenzo is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) and he is continuing with the responsibility for the analysis of the UVES spectra for the node of Arcetri.
Research Interests: chemical evolution of the Milky Way, metal content of pre-main-sequence clusters, chemical signatures of planet formation and planet engulfment events, high-precision abundance determinations (σ≤0.01 dex).