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    Prof. Antonaldo Diaferio

    is professor of Cosmology at the University of Torino. He obtained his Ph.D. in Astronomy at the Universities of Milano and Pavia in 1995 and spent a few years at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, MA and at the Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik in Garching, Germany before moving back to Italy. He works on the formation of galaxies and large-scale structure and on alternative theories of gravity. He chaired the IAU Colloquium 195 "Outskirts of Galaxy Clusters: Intense Life in the Suburbs" and coauthored a book on clusters of galaxies ("Clusters of Galaxies: Beyond the Thermal View"). With Margaret Geller and Ken Rines at the CfA, he developed the caustic technique to estimate the masses of clusters to far beyond the virial radius.
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    Dr. Garry Angus

    holds a research scholarship at the University of Torino. He completed his Ph.D at the University of St. Andrews, UK in 2008 with a thesis entitled “Modified Newtonian Dynamics at all Astrophysical Scales”. His most recent work includes an exhaustive study of the dwarf satellites of the Milky Way in MOND and modeling of galaxy clusters and the cosmic microwave background in MOND: postulating an 11eV sterile neutrino as fitting both these constraints and many others. This is currently the only cosmological theory that fits data both at the large, cosmological scale and at the small scale of galaxies, although the 11eV sterile neutrino, is still at large (as is the neutralino). He is currently running numerical simulations of dwarf galaxies in MOND in order to better understand the unusual quasi-tidal behaviour of the Draco and Sextans dSphs.

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    Elisa Boera

    is a graduate of the University of Milano Bicocca. She is doing her masters thesis with Antonaldo Diaferio trying to reproduce the anisotropies of the CMB in conformal gravity.
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    Stefano Camera

    is a Ph.D. student at the University of Torino. He completed his Master Degree in Physics of Fundamental Interactions at the University of Torino in 2007 with a thesis entitled "Large-scale structure formation in alternative theories of gravity", under the supervision of Professor Diaferio. He obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Physics at the University of Torino in 2005 with a thesis entitled "Eddingtonland, or on General Relativity and on the geometry of Eddington surface in Schwarzschild solution, a physical-geometrical study" under the supervision of professor Magnano. At the moment he is working on weak gravitational lensing, in particular on shear and convergence power spectrum in LCDM and alternative models, like brane-world (DGP) and Unified Dark Matter (for the latter in collaboration with Daniele Bertacca).
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    Dr. Luisa Ostorero

    is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Torino. She obtained her Ph.D at the same University in 2003, with a thesis on Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN's) entitled "Study of the blazar multifrequency variability in view of the AGILE space mission". She spent three years in Heidelberg (Germany), at the Centre for Astronomy (ZAH/LSW), and a semester in Turku (Finland), at the Tuorla Astronomical Observatory. In collaboration with these institutes, Stanford University, and the Warsaw Copernicus Astronomical Center, she currently works on observations and modelling of the broad-band spectral properties of two different classes of AGN's: blazars and young radio galaxies. Recently, she has also approached the study of alternative gravity theories, investigating whether conformal gravity can account for the observed properties of galaxy clusters.
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    Ana Laura Serra

    is a graduate of Cordoba University in Argentina and is currently a Ph.D student working on Diaferio’s caustic methods of constraining clusters masses in concert with X-ray hydrodynamical methods, weak lensing and galaxy velocity dispersions. It is hoped that a comparison between all forms of mass estimation can unveil departures from General Relativity, or a calibration of the techniques. Ana Laura has recently applied the caustic technique to the dwarf spheroidal galaxies of the Milky Way and has shown that significant numbers of unbound, or non-equilibrium stars contaminate the sample used to determine their dynamics. This significantly modifies the dark matter halos required.
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    Iary Davidzon

    is a masters student working on the application of the caustic technique to the Shapley Supercluster.
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