Bio

Manuela Campanelli is the director of RIT’s Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation (CCRG). She obtained her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Bern in 1996. Her research includes strong-regime general relativity, numerical relativity, and binary black holes.

Her research group, which now resides at the CCRG, had its claim to fame in 2006, when they published their “breakthrough” paper, Accurate Evolutions of Orbiting Black-Hole Binaries without Excision. This paper was recognized in APS’s “General Relativity’s Centennial”, a collection of landmark papers in relativity, over the century following the birth of GR.

Dr. Campanelli is also an ethical vegetarian, and has three dogs.

Papers

• The Lazarus project: A pragmatic approach to binary black hole evolutions
  • The project which gave new life to the numerical study of binary black holes, by creating a Frankenstein monster of existing but incomplete solutions to parts of the problem.
• Accurate Evolutions of Orbiting Black-Hole Binaries without Excision
  • The “breakthrough” paper. This paper described the first successful attempt to simulate binary black holes without any “funny business”. It all worked on first principles, and revolutionized binary black hole astrophysics.
• Inspiraling Black-Hole Binary Spacetimes: Transitioning from Analytical to Numerical Techniques
  • Performs simulations of binary black hole mergers, using a recently developed analytical spacetime and transitioning to a numerical one.
• Inspiralling, Non-Precessing, Spinning Black Hole Binary Spacetime via Asymptotic Matching
  • Describes a novel analytic spacetime metric which approximates the spacetime of a non-precessing, spinning black hole binary system.

Graduate Students

• Dennis Bowen
• Brennan Ireland