PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Viviana Acquaviva

Viviana Acquaviva is an astrophysicist and climate data scientist whose machine-learning work spans galaxy histories, climate models, and ocean carbon. She studied physics in Pisa and astrophysics in Trieste, held postdoctoral positions at Princeton and Rutgers, and joined CUNY faculty in 2012. She coauthored convolutional-network research on galaxy star-formation histories and published a machine-learning textbook that won the 2024 Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award. A Simons PIVOT Fellowship and research award supported her shift into climate data science. As of October 2026, she is a Full Professor of Physics at CUNY and serves on the PRX Intelligence editorial board.

Born
1979

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. By 2012

    Education and CUNY appointment

    She earns a master's degree in physics from the University of Pisa and a PhD in astrophysics at the International School of Advanced Studies in Trieste. She holds postdoctoral positions at Princeton and Rutgers before joining the CUNY faculty in 2012.

  2. 2019

    Convolutional networks for galaxies

    In 2019, she coauthors a study that trains convolutional neural networks on synthetic galaxy spectra from the EAGLE and Illustris simulations to infer star-formation histories.

  3. 2022

    A Simons PIVOT fellowship

    In 2022, the Simons Foundation selects her as a PIVOT Fellow to bring numerical modeling, statistics, and machine-learning skills from astrophysics into Earth models.

  4. 2023–2024

    A machine-learning textbook

    In 2023, she publishes Machine Learning for Physics and Astronomy with Princeton University Press. The book wins the American Astronomical Society's Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award in 2024.

  5. June 2025–May 2030

    Climate data science grant

    Her $1.78 million Simons Foundation grant runs from June 2025 through May 2030 for the single-PI project From sparse data to full spatio-temporal fields: surface ocean carbon and beyond. It supports a climate data science group, a graduate student, and a postdoctoral researcher.

  6. January 2026

    Learning from simulations

    In January 2026, she presents “Learning from simulations using statistics, ML, and AI” at Carnegie Mellon's STAMPS seminar. Her talk covers validating cosmological simulations, modeling galaxy evolution, comparing climate models, and reconstructing ocean fields from sparse, biased data.

  7. 2026

    Ocean carbon metrics

    In 2026, she coauthors a framework for comparing surface-ocean carbon observations with global ocean biogeochemistry models. It proposes two new comparison metrics and shows that optimal data representations can improve distance-based machine-learning models.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor and editorial board member

    As of October 2026, she is a Full Professor of Physics at the City University of New York and a member of the PRX Intelligence editorial board. Her lab applies statistical tools, machine learning, and AI to improve global climate models and study the ocean carbon cycle.

Career

  1. NowCity University of New YorkFull Professor of Physics
  2. Princeton UniversityPostdoctoral researcher
  3. Rutgers UniversityPostdoctoral researcher

Education

  1. 2012International School for Advanced StudiesPhD in astrophysics
  2. University of PisaMaster's degree in physics

From the biography.

Videos

YouTube videos in which Viviana Acquaviva speaks or appears, newest first. A model chose them from YouTube search results. List updated 21 October 2026.

  1. Exploring Dark Energy & Star Formation w/ ML with Viviana Acquaviva - TWiML Talk #184The TWIML AI Podcast with Sam Charrington · 26 September 2018 · 41 min

Video data from YouTube API Services. By watching you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service. How we use YouTube data.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes City University of New York. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes City University of New York. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes City University of New York. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  4. Universities keep AI researchers for a median of 6 years, compared with 2 years at frontier labsIncludes Rutgers University. Across 15,811 dated work stays (6,529 people), median role tenure runs from 6 years at universities to 2 years at frontier labs. We compare all five organization types, starting decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, and the organizations that keep people longest.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Viviana Acquaviva yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) citytech.cuny.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Learning the Relationship between Galaxies Spectra and their Star Formation Histories using Convolutional Neural Networks and Cosmological Simulations arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Simons Foundation Announces First Pivot Fellowship Recipients simonsfoundation.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. AstroAI Workshop 2025 astroai.cfa.harvard.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. News & Kudos | Faculty Commons facultycommons.citytech.cuny.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. The Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) - City Tech citytech.cuny.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. STAMPS Seminar - Viviana Acquaviva | Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science Department csd.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. How well is surface ocean carbon represented in observations and ocean models? arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. PRX Intelligence - Editors of PRX Intelligence journals.aps.org. Checked 21 October 2026.