Alfio Maurizio BONANNO

Alfio Bonanno is a Senior Researcher (Primo Ricercatore) at INAF – Catania Astrophysical Observatory and is affiliated with INFN, Catania Section. At the University of Catania he teaches Magnetohydrodynamics and Plasma Physics, after teaching General Relativity for many years. He received his Laurea (1992) and PhD in Physics (1995) from the University of Catania. He was a research assistant at the University of Alberta, a Della Riccia Fellow in Strasbourg, a Marie Curie Fellow (2006) and a DFG Mercator Fellow (2024–2025) at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam. He holds the Italian National Habilitation as Full Professor in Theoretical Physics (2015).

For three decades he has worked where quantum gravity meets relativistic astrophysics. In 2000, with M. Reuter, he introduced renormalization-group-improved black holes, now a standard reference for black-hole physics in asymptotically safe gravity. More recently he showed that regular black holes can form in gravitational collapse. He also works on magnetohydrodynamic turbulence and dynamo theory, which describe how magnetic fields in stars and accretion flows grow and saturate, as well as on stellar astrophysics and asteroseismology, and is a member of the Kepler, TESS and PLATO consortia.

He currently supervises five PhD students and a postdoctoral researcher. He is a Corresponding Member of the Accademia Gioenia.