LEONE Francesco

Professore Ordinario

Orari di ricevimento

Il Prof.
Francesco LEONE riceve il venerdì dalle 16 alle 18.
Si consiglia comunque di contattare il docente in anticipo per verificare che impegni istituzionali o personali non lo costringano a spostare il ricevimento di un giorno specifico.

Curriculum

Education and career development
• 1985 Degree in Physics at the Catania University
• 1987 - 2005 Staff Astronomer at the Catania Astrophysical Observatory
• 2006 - Appointed Associated Professor in Astrophysics at the Catania University
• 2022 Appointed Full Professor in Astrophysics at the Catania University

Institutional responsibilities
• Since 2008, Directory of “Sezione Astrofisica del Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia dell’Università di Catania”.
• 2011-2015 Director of the Catania University Section of the University Net for Astronomy and Astrophysics

Teaching, academic supervision and outreaching activities
• 1996 - 1999 Course of Stellar Spectroscopy for Ph.D. students
• 2006 – 2007 Course of Physics of Space, Astronomy and Physics
• 2008 – 2009 Course of Physics of Space and Laboratory for Astrophysics
• 2009 - Courses: Astrophysical Laboratory I and II.
• 2009-2017 Member of Ph.D. Board at the Physics and Astronomy Department at Catania University.

Tutor of 10 Bachelor, 23 MA, and 12 PhD thesis in Astrophysics.
Member of Doctorate Board for National and International Institutions.

Research activity
The research field is mainly in the study of stellar atmospheres by comparison of theoretical computation and high resolution spectroscopic data. Particular interest is devoted to the reconstruction of magnetic fields. The approach is three-fold:
• numerical codes to solve the radiative transfer in presence of magnetic fields, both Zeeman and Pachen-Back regime have been investigated. Latest version in Stift & Leone (2017, ApJ 83, 24)
• including magnetic field effects in atomic physics (Zhang et al. 2020 ApJ 902, 7; Giarrusso et al. 2020 JPPh 86, id.845860502; Leone et al. 2018 MNRAS 480, 1656; Leone et al. 2017, ApJ 848, 107)
• instrumentation for the Catania Astrophysical Observatory and Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (Leone et al 2003, SPIE 9908, 7; Covino et al. 2014 AN 335, 117; Leone et al. 2016, AJ 355, 315; Leone et al. 2016 SPIE 9908, 7; Ghedina et al. 2018 SPIE 10702, 5).

Projects
• 2020 LAPSUS (Munari et al. 2021 SPIE, 1876E..0M)
• 2018 MAPS-3D (Giarrusso et al. 2018 JInst 13, 1020)
• 2018 SIFAP2@TNG (Ghedina et al. 2018 SPIE 10702, 5)
• 2012 HARPS-North@TNG polarimeter (Leone F. et al. 2014 SPIE 9147, 2)
• 2012 Catania Astrophysical Observatory Spectropolarimeter (Leone F. et al. 2016 AJ 151,116)
• 2011 DOLORES@TNG polarimeter (Covino et al. 2014 AN 335, 117)
• 2004 GIANO@TNG NIR-spectrograph (Oliva et al. 2012 SPIE 8446,3)
• 2003 High-resolution spectropolarimetry @TNG (Leone et al. 2003 SPIE 4843, 465)

Collaborations

Km3Net https://www.km3net.org/
CTA https://www.cta-observatory.org/
MAGIC https://magic.mpp.mpg.de/
LSST https://www.vro.org/
PLUS https://www.afs.enea.it/project/astro/ (Board member)

Bibliometry
Citation metrics from ADS
Refereed papers = 205
Citations = 5132
h-index = 35

The complete list of papers is at
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/q=orcid%3A0000-0001-7626-3788&sort=date+desc

Referee service
• Referee for the most important international journals in the area of Astrophysics and national and international research projects.
• Member of Allocation Commettee dell’European Southern Observatory

National and international grants

Year Financing Institution Project POSITION
2022 Consorzio DTT Passive Spectroscopy co-PI
2021 Consorzio DTT Passive Spectroscopy co-PI
2020 UniCT ASTRI PI
2019 ASI LAPSUS - progetto UV Spectroscopy of Laboratory Plasma for Solar Physics, co-PI
2019 UniCT CHANCE PI
2018 INFN MAPS-3D co-PI
2017 INAF SKA-CTA co-PI
2016 INFN PANDORA co-PI
2014 UniCT Stellar Abundance of light elements: merging stellar models and nuclear experimental reactions. PI
2012 MIUR – Progetti premiali T-REX Italian Technology for E-ELT co-I
2011 MIUR – Progetti premiali T-REX Italian Technology for E-ELT co-I
2010 INAF Asteroseismology co-I
2009 INAF A polarimetric module for DOLORES@TNG. co-I
2009 INAF Millisecond ASIC for the Readout of CCDs co-I