Ilaria Carleo obtained a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Padua and INAF in 2018, with a thesis on observations of young stars to understand planet formation.
Her Master’s degree in Astrophysics and Cosmology was awarded in 2014 from the University of Bologna, where she studied high-precision radial velocities. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Salerno, focusing on microlensing as a method for exoplanet detection.
Ilaria Carleo is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at INAF-Turin, contributing to the analysis of HARPS-N data to search for small planets in systems with known long-period companions.
She has won funding of €246,000 from the Ministry of Universities and Research (MUR) for young researchers (November 2024). Previously, she held the Juan de la Cierva Fellowship at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), coordinating radial velocity follow-ups of TESS candidates and leading programs to measure exoplanet masses. Earlier, she held research positions at Indiana University and Wesleyan University, contributing to the discovery and characterization of several exoplanetary systems.
Her research can be outlined in three branches: detection of giant planets around young stars, follow-up and mass determination of TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) candidates, and characterization of exoplanet atmospheres. Each of these fields can add a piece to the puzzle of planetary formation and evolution theory, which is still a nearly uncharted field to be explored and understood.
She also worked as Instrument Scientist for the GIARPS project and developed a pipeline to derive high precision radial velocities from near-infrared spectra of GIANO-B. She is a member of the GAPS Science Team, member of KESPRINT collaboration.