School of Physics Spring Colloquium Series - Dr. Marco Ajello

Speaker: Dr. Marco Ajello

Host: Ignacio Toaboda

Title: You can teach an old dog new tricks: 17 years of Fermi observations of the gamma-ray sky

Abstract: The Fermi Large Area Telescope has monitored the GeV gamma-ray sky for over 17 years, delivering a wealth of discoveries that have fundamentally shaped our understanding of the Milky Way and other galaxies. In this talk, I will highlight recent results on the gamma-ray emission from galaxies and their nuclear regions, and I will present new constraints on dark matter annihilation derived from studies of Milky Way satellite galaxies.

Bio: Marco Ajello is a professor in the department of Physics and Astronomy of Clemson University. His research focuses on the origins of cosmological backgrounds and the evolution of massive black holes at the center of galaxies.

He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2001 at the University of Palermo, Italy, followed by a master’s degree in Physics at the University of Trieste, Italy and a Ph.D. in Physics in 2007 awarded by the Technical University of Munich, Germany. After postdoctoral research at Stanford University and at the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the faculty at Clemson University in 2014.

Among other awards, Marco Ajello received the South Carolina Governor’s award for excellence in research and the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society.