Fabio Pacucci

Fabio Pacucci (born 1988) is an Italian-American astrophysicist and science communicator. He is currently a Staff Astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, a collaboration between Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

He is widely known for his research on black holes, quasars, high-redshift galaxies, and dark matter, with a particular emphasis on the formation and evolution of the first black holes in the Universe, also known as black hole seeds. Pacucci led the discovery of the first candidate direct collapse black holes and contributed to identifying the farthest gravitationally-lensed quasar and galaxy known prior to the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. More recently, he has been a leading contributor to the study of "Little Red Dots", a population of compact, high-redshift sources potentially hosting overmassive black holes.

Pacucci is also active in science communication. He has collaborated with TED-Ed since 2018, creating a series of animated educational videos viewed by millions and translated into over 25 languages. In addition to numerous public talks, he has written for media outlets such as Scientific American, Sky & Telescope, and The Conversation. Provided by Wikipedia