Licia Verde

Universitat de Barcelona (UB)

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

Originally from Venice (Italy) Licia Verde studied physics as an undergraduate at the Università degli Studi di Padova. She obtained her PhD from the University of Edinburgh (UK) sponsored by a Marie Curie grant from the EU, and then moved to a research assistant position at Princeton University and at Rutgers University (USA). At Princeton she held a Chandra postdoctoral fellowship and a Spitzer postdoctoral fellowship and she entered the WMAP science team. She spent 4 years as faculty at the University of Pennsylvania (USA). In September 2007, she moved to Barcelona as an ICREA Research Professor.


Research interests

I am interested in Cosmology, which is the study of the origin, evolution and composition of the universe. One of the recent discoveries in cosmology is that more than 70% of what makes up the universe is not even matter, but something that suggests that some energy is associated with the nothingness of vacuum. This component has been dubbed “dark energy”. Dark energy may as well be one of the major problems in physics today and is motivating a host of future and planned experiments. I study the “large-scale distribution of galaxies” and the statistical properties of the heat left over from the big bang to shed some light on the universe composition, including the dark energy component, and its history.

Selected publications

– Moresco M, Pozzetti L, Cimatti A, Jimenez R, Maraston C, Verde L, Thomas D, Citro A, Tojeiro R & Wilkinson D 2016, ‘A 6% measurement of the Hubble parameter at z similar to 0.45: direct evidence of the epoch of cosmic re-acceleration’, Journal Of Cosmology And Astroparticle Physics, 4, 014.

– Cuesta AJ, Niro V & Verde L 2016, ‘Neutrino mass limits: Robust information from the power spectrum of galaxy surveys’, Physics Of The Dark Universe, 13, 77 – 86.

– Bellini E, Cuesta AJ, Jimenez R & Verde L 2016, ‘Constraints on deviations from ΛCDM within Horndeski gravity, JCAP, 02053.

– Ravenni A, Verde L & Cuesta AJ 2016, ‘Red, Straight, no bends: primordial power spectrum reconstruction from CMB and large-scale structure, JCAP, 08028.

– Bernal JL, Verde L & Riess AG 2016, “The trouble with H0”, JCAP 10019

– Piran T, Jimenez R, Cuesta AJ, Simpson F & Verde L 2016, ‘Cosmic Explosions, Life in the Universe, and the Cosmological Constant’, Physical Review Letters, 116, 8, 081301.

– Bernal JL, Verde L & Cuesta AJ 2016, ‘Parameter splitting in dark energy: is dark energy the same in the background and in the cosmic structures?’, Journal Of Cosmology And Astroparticle Physics, 2, 059.

– Kitching TD, Verde L, Heavens AF & Jimenez R 2016, ‘Discrepancies between CFHTLenS cosmic shear and Planck: new physics or systematic effects?’, Monthly Notices Of The Royal Astronomical Society, 459, 1, 971 – 981.


Selected research activities

Young Academy of Europe member.

Editor of Physics of the Dark Universe.

International Astrostatstics association council member.

WHBG Public broadcasting, “Probing The Large-Scale Universe”.

ArXiv Science Advisory Board

Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics