Costellazione Manga: about us
Daria Dall'Olio
Daria Dall'Olio has a PhD in Astronomy from Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. She is now a post-doctoral student at the University of Bologna, the INAF-Istituto di Radioastronomia, and the Onsala Space Observatory, thanks to an international felloship from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). Her research concerns radioastronomy and star formation. She has won several international awards, including some for best oral presentation and best poster at professional astronomy conferences. Some of the illustrations she made are available in her portfolio. She is a member of the amateur astronomy association "ARAR" of Ravenna (Italy) and a long-time collaborator of the Planetarium of Ravenna, where she organised astronomy outreach events. She is interested in Japanese culture and she is also a member of the steering committee of the Japanese-Italian cultural association "ASCIG" of Ravenna. Moreover, she is a licensed guide of the natural environment, and thanks to this she was able to offer Costellazione Manga also in the form of open-air activities and observations of the sky in natural parks.
Piero Ranalli
Piero Ranalli has a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Bologna. He has been a post-doctoral researcher in Japan, Greece, Italy and Sweden. His research concerned mainly X-ray observations of galaxies and active galactic nuclei; since a few years he is also interested on extra-solar planets. He has authored more than 50 publications on international specialistic journals. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). He collaborates with the Planetarium of Ravenna and he is interested in Japanese culture. Currently he works as Senior AI Scientist at Silo AI where he focuses on data science and artificial intelligence.
Collaborators
Marco Del Bene
Marco Del Bene is Associated Professor of Japanese History at the Department "Italian Institute for Oriental Studies / ISO" of La Sapienza University in Rome. Beside the research and teaching activities in the academic field, in various universities in Italy and in Japan, he is actively promoting the knowledge of Japanese culture to the general public. He is the founder and the Artistic director of the festival "Japanese October" that has been held every year since 2003 in the province of Ravenna. He is also President of the Association for Cultural Exchanges between Italy and Japan (ASCIG) which organizes the Japanese October. Precisely for his role in ASCIG and Japanese October, he contributed in 2011 to the birth of Constellation Manga.
Claudio Codella
Claudio Codella is an astrophysicist working at the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri (INAF-OAA) in Firenze (Italy). He works on the process of star formation, through observations at different wavelengths. He worked at the Max-Planck Institut in Bonn (Germany), the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in Madrid (Spain), and at the CNR institutes in Bologna and Roma (Italy). He is an expert in astrochemistry and he started since many years several projects (mainly in collaboration with IPAG-Grenoble, France, and the University of Tokyo) to investigate the physical-chemical complexity of regions which can be considered the cradle of planetary systems, possibly associated with conditions conducive to the emergency of Life.
Alessandra Zanazzi
Alessandra Zanazzi has a master degree in Astrophysics. Since 1996 she has been working in the field of science communication and education, designing and carrying out activities (with schools, families, general public), events, and teachers training courses. She now works at INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, researching an Astro-tourism pilot project. She is part of the GENESIS-SKA outreach group. Until 2010 she worked at Città della Scienza in Naples, the first Italian Science Centre, where she was responsible for Planetarium and Astronomy activities. She participated – in many cases as National or European Manager – in writing and carrying out many European projects in Science Communication and Sciendce & Society (Horizon 2020, Fp7th, Fp6th, Leonardo, Erasmus).
Yvette Gustafsson
Yvette Gustafsson is a comic book artist. She makes the comic "Infosfären" for Populär Astronomi, where she writes about space related facts. She also makes the adventurous comic Zak&Ting, previously published in the comic magazine Nemi.
Toshihiro Handa
Toshihiro Handa is a professor of astronomy at Kagoshima University in Japan. He studies the interstellar medium in the Milky Way using radio observations. He is science consultat for the anime Star Blazers 2199 (Space Battleship Yamato 2199; 宇宙戦艦ヤマト2199) and he is the author of the book"Understanding astronomy with Space Battleship Yamato 2199" (宇宙戦艦ヤマト2199でわかる天文学).