Diego Turrini

Who am I in a nutshell I'm a theoretical astrophysicist and planetary scientist whose research interests revolve around the formation and evolution of planetary systems. The overarching questions at the basis of my research are: what are the compositional signatures left by the processes shaping the birth of planetary systems? How are they altered by the interactions between the planets and their evolving surrounding environments? Which architectural characteristics of planetary systems can we use to shed light on which alterations affected the composition of individual planets? I'm actively involved in multiple ESA and NASA space missions and contributed to a number of space mission studies, proposals and white papers. As a tool of the trade, I've a keen interest in scientific and high-performance computing and I'm the scientific responsible of the Genesis cluster at INAF. I had the luck of learning from Angioletta Coradini: I can often be as irritating as her, hopefully sometimes I can also manage to be as good!

Present position

Researcher at the Turin Astrophysical Observatory (OATO) of the Italian National Astrophysics Institute (INAF). On transfer from INAF - Institute of Space Astrophysics and Planetology (IAPS).

Research interests and fields of expertise

• Planetary formation
• Solar System and exoplanets
• Composition of planets and minor bodies
• Planetary architectures and N-Body problems
• Impact processes
• Space missions
• Scientific and high-performance computing

Scientific and Professional Highlights:

• Principal Investigator of the national project Ariel and the astrochemical link between protoplanetary disks and planets funded by INAF and the international project Vesta, the key to the origins of the Solar System funded by the International Space Science Institute in Bern.
• Scientific coordinator of the Planet Formation Working Group for the ESA M4 mission Ariel.
• Asteroid (11803) Turrini has been named after me in 2017 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for my work in the field of planetary sciences and on the NASA mission Dawn.
• Zel'dovich Medal 2014 - Scientific Commission B (Space Studies of the Earth-Moon System, Planets, and Small Bodies of the Solar System) from the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
• Member (2015-2020) of the ESA Science Advisory and Science Study Teams for the M4 space mission Ariel.
• Member (2018-2020) of the ESA Solar System Exploration Working Group, one of the scientific advisory bodies of the European Space Agency.
• Member of the Science Study Team for the ESA Ice Giants CDF Study for the participation to a NASA-led mission to Uranus and Neptune and European representative for the NASA Science Definition Team for future space missions to the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
• Co-investigator in the NASA mission Juno and the ESA mission JUICE and scientific team member in the NASA mission Dawn and in the ESA mission BepiColombo.
• Co-author of the ESA space mission proposals L1 Laplace (then adopted as Juice), M3 EChO and M4 Ariel, and national coordinator of the ESA M4 proposal Uranus Pathfinder 2.
• International coordinator of the white paper The ODINUS Mission Concept submitted to the ESA call for ideas for the L2 and L3 missions and member of the international steering committee of the white paper Ice Giants Systems- The scientific potential of missions to the Uranus and Neptune Systems submitted to the ESA call Voyage 2050.
• Main author of the first statistical impact contamination model of asteroids, allowing to study quantitatively the contamination of asteroidal surfaces by impacts.
• Main author of the Jovian Early Bombardment model, describing the primordial bombardments triggered by forming giant planets in circumstellar disks.
• Editor of the book Satellites of the Outer Solar System - Exchange Processes Involving the Interiors published by Springer.