Gabriela Sato-Polito

Gabriela (Gabi) Sato-Polito is a theoretical astrophysicist working on gravitational waves and cosmology. She is broadly interested in using astrophysical observations to address questions about the origin, evolution, and composition of the Universe. Her primary research centers on low-frequency (~nHz) gravitational waves measured with pulsar timing arrays---networks of precisely timed millisecond pulsars that act as a galactic-scale detector. The dominant sources of gravitational waves at these frequencies are expected to be inspiraling supermassive black holes, and her work connects gravitational-wave measurements to theoretical predictions of their merger histories and to the broader body of electromagnetic observations of these objects. These include a census of the black hole population and its accretion-driven growth, as traced by quasar activity. She is also interested in line-intensity mapping as a new cosmological probe. By capturing the aggregate emission of spectral lines across cosmic volumes and epochs inaccessible to traditional surveys, it offers a complementary route to studying both the large-scale structure of the Universe and the astrophysics driving the emission of light from galaxies and the gas between them.