Viviana Acquaviva (born June 5, 1979) is an Italian astrophysicist who is a professor in the Department of Physics at the New York City College of Technology. Her research interests consider data science and machine learning for physics and astronomy. She was named one of Italy's most inspirational technologists in 2019.[1]
Acquaviva joined the faculty of City University of New York.[4] Her research considers the development of computational tools to determine information about galaxy properties, including star formation history, the attenuation of dust and stellar mass.[5][6] She created GalMC, a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm, that could be used to infer age, metallicity and star formation rate from spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting.[5] She was part of Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS).[7] She has shown that machine learning models can be used to understand the relationship between galaxy spectra and the histories of their star formation.[8]
Acquaviva seeks to improve diversity within the astrophysics community.[9][10] She has led training programs for people from groups historically marginalized from astrophysics, including people in correctional facilities.[11]
