Dr. Manuela Campanelli is a Distinguished Professor of Astrophysics,John Vouros Endowed Professor at RIT. She is also the founding Director of the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation. Campanelli was the recipient of the Marie Curie Fellowship (1998), the American Physical Society (APS) Fellowship (2009), the RIT Trustee Scholarship Award (2014), and the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation Fellowship (2019) and received the Isaac Richardson award in gravitational wave science (2024) by the APS. She was the Chair of the Topical Group in Gravitation of the APS in 2013.

Dr. Campanelli has an extensive research experience on Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, astrophysics of black holes and gravitational waves. She is known for groundbreaking work on numerical simulations of binary black hole space times and for explorations of physical effects such as “super kicks” and spin-driven orbital dynamics. In 2005, she was the lead author of a work that produced a breakthrough on binary black hole simulations. In 2007, she discovered that supermassive black holes can be ejected from most galaxies at speeds of up to 4000km/s.

Her more current research focuses on computer simulations of merging supermassive black holes, and on magnetohydrodynamics simulations of their accretion disk and jet dynamics, in connection with both gravitational-wave and electromagnetic observations. She also participates in the LIGO scientific collaboration. The search for gravitational waves from binary black holes and binary neutron stars moved forward in September with the first observing run of the upgraded laser interferometer, Advanced LIGO gravitational wave detectors. Dr. Campanelli’s research include numerous publications and invited presentations and reviews papers. One of her papers was recently highlighted by the APS as one of the landmark papers of the century on the subject of general relativity, starting with a contribution from Einstein himself. Her work was highlighted by the American APS focus,  The New Scientist, Astronomy and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory’s LIGO Magazine.

Campanelli lead several funded research projects that produced numerous significant publications (see ORCID INSPIRE DataBase).