Michele Trenti

Professor Michele Trenti is a Professor in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne, appointed in January 2021 after serving as Associate Professor from 2018 to 2020 and Senior Lecturer from 2014 to 2017. Prior to his positions at Melbourne, he was a Senior Kavli Institute Fellow at the University of Cambridge from 2012 to 2014 and held postdoctoral appointments at the Space Telescope Science Institute and the University of Colorado, Boulder, following his PhD earned in 2005. He graduated from the Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy's most selective academic institution modeled after the French Ecole Normale Superieure.

Trenti's research specializes in the formation and evolution of stars and galaxies from the emergence of the first stars approximately 100 million years after the Big Bang to the present day. His work integrates observations of the most distant galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope, theoretical modeling, and computer simulations. As Principal Investigator of the Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies Survey (BoRG), a multi-year Hubble program, he has been awarded over 2,100 hours of observing time, placing him among the top 10 Hubble users since 2001. He serves as Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO-3D), leading the First Galaxies program, and as Principal Investigator for the SpIRIT mission, a 6U CubeSat technology demonstrator funded by the Australian Space Agency. Trenti directs the Melbourne Space Laboratory and leads development of the SkyHopper mission concept, a small near-infrared space telescope on a 12U CubeSat. His projects have attracted over AUD 9 million in funding. Among his honors are the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, Kavli Institute Fellowship, and Marie Curie Career Integration Fellowship.

Professional Email: michele.trenti@unimelb.edu.au