Luca Matra

I am an astronomer working as a Submillimeter Array (SMA) Fellow here at the Harvard-Smithsonian CfA. My work focuses on observations and modeling of gas and dust in belts and rings of exocomets around nearby stars (also known as debris disks), using their observed structure and composition to constrain models of planet formation and evolution.Before coming to the CfA, I obtained my PhD in 2017 at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge (UK), where I worked mainly with Mark Wyatt on my thesis titled 'Exocometary Gas in Debris Disks' . I also spent a year of my PhD as a European Southern Observatory (ESO) student in Santiago (Chile), working on ALMA with Bill Dent. Before my graduate studies, I obtained a Physics with Astrophysics (B.A.) degree at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), and completed my undergraduate thesis on Herschel photometry of transitional disks with Bruno Mern at the European Space Agency's Astronomy center (ESAC) near Madrid (Spain).