Education & Professional Experience
Honors and Awards:
Royal Astronomical Society Michael Penston Prize runner-up (2019)
Enrico Persico award (2014)
Leadership Roles:
Research Interests
I am an observational cosmologist and astronomer interested in novel methods to understand the content and evolution of the Universe. My main goal is to exploit information from both galaxy surveys and gravitational wave (GW) data to understand the Universes dynamics and content, and to shed light on the origin of GW sources and their correlation with galaxy evolution. As a result of my interests in galaxy evolution, galaxy clusters and galaxy redshifts estimation, along with GW follow-up and extragalactic transients, my research lies at the interface between large galaxy surveys, time domain astronomy, and GW experiments.
I am heavily involved in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and the Dark Energy Survey (DES) experiments, and I also contribute to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission. I am a member of the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration and of the Cosmic Explorer Consortium. I use several facilities to perform gravitational wave follow-up, looking for the electromagnetic radiation produced by cosmic collisions between neutron stars or black holes.
Selected Publications
J. Gassert, A. Amsellem, I. Magana Hernandez, A. Palmese & B. Pocsoz, 2026, https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.00306
Cosmic Pairs: A DESI Census of Dual and Offset AGN as Precursors to Massive Black Hole Binaries
E. Dadiani, A. Palmese et al., 2026, https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.27390
The Lazuli Space Observatory: Opportunities for time-domain and multi-messenger astronomy
T. Wevers, T. Maccarone, A. Palmese et al., 2026, PASP, in press
One Year and One Night to 1% in H0: Efficient Spectroscopic Strategy for Dark Siren Cosmology
Y. Wang, A. J. Amsellem, I. Magana-Hernandez, A. Palmese, & B. Sathyaprakash, 2026, https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.17284
Electromagnetic Follow-up of the Sub-Solar Mass Gravitational Wave Candidate S251112cm: Kilonova Constraints and a Coincident IIb Supernova
X. J. Hall, T. Ahumada, J. Gassert, A. Palmese et al., 2026, arXiv:2605.10940
The host galaxies and merger environments of short and long gamma-ray bursts producing kilonovae
H. Skobe, B. O’Connor, A. Palmese et al., 2026, ApJ, 1009, 50
Wide Jets or Low Rates: Reconciling Short GRB and Gravitational Wave Neutron Star Merger Rates
K. Kunnumkai, A. Palmese et al., 2026, https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.05046
A GPU-Accelerated Transient Detection Pipeline for DECam Time-Domain Surveys
L. Hu, T. Cabrera, A. Palmese et al., 2026, PASP 138, 074503
Data-Driven Trends and Subpopulations in the Gravitational Wave Binary Black Hole Merger Population with UMAP
A. J. Amsellem, I. Maga˜na Hernandez, A. Palmese et al., 2026, under PRX Intelligence Review
The DESI Transients Survey: Legacy Classifications and Methodology
X. J. Hall, A. Palmese et al., 2026, ApJS 285, 10
Probing the environment around GW170817 with DESI: insights on galaxy group peculiar velocities for standard siren measurements
A. J. Amsellem, A. Palmese et al., 2025, ApJ, 1001 157
AT2025ulz and S250818k: Investigating early time observations of a subsolar mass gravitational-wave binary neutron star merger candidate
X. J. Hall, M. Busmann, H. Koehn, K. Kunnumkai, A. Palmese et al., 2025, arXiv:2510.24620
AT2025ulz and S250818k: Leveraging DESI spectroscopy in the hunt for a kilonova associated with a sub-solar mass gravitational wave candidate
X. J. Hall, A. Palmese et al., 2026, ApJL 1001, L20
Multi-messenger constraints on LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA gravitational wave binary black holes merging in AGN disks
T. Cabrera, A. Palmese & M. Fishbach, 2026, ApJ 1000, 234
Astrophysics informed Gaussian processes for gravitational-wave populations: Evidence for the onset of the pair-instability supernova mass gap
I. Magana Hernandez & A. Palmese, et al. 2025, arXiv:2508.19208
Detecting prompt and afterglow jet emission of gravitational wave events from LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA and next generation detectors
R. Kaur, B. O’Connor, A. Palmese, et al., 2026, ApJ 1000, 74
Kilonova constraints for the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA neutron star-black hole merger candidate S250206dm: GW-MMADS observations
L. Hu, T. Cabrera, A. Palmese, et al. 2025, ApJL 990 L46
Identifying Anomalous DESI Galaxy Spectra with a Variational Autoencoder
C. Nicolaou, R.P. Nathan, O. Lahav, A. Palmese, et al. 2026, MNRAS 5476, stag010
Gravitational Wave Cosmology
A. Palmese & S. Mastrogiovanni, 2026, Encyclopedia of Astrophysics, 5, pp. 557-576 (book chapter)K. Kunnumkai, A. Palmese, et al., Kilonova emission from GW230529 and mass gap neutron star-black hole mergers, arXiv:2409.10651 (2024)
T. Cabrera, A. Palmese, et al., Searching for electromagnetic emission in an AGN from the gravitational wave binary black hole merger candidate S230922g, arXiv:2407.10698 (2024)
I. Magana-Hernandez & A. Palmese, A new bump in the night: evidence of a new feature in the binary black hole mass distribution at 70 solar masses from gravitational-wave observations, arXiv:2407.02460 (2024)
A. Palmese et al., A standard siren measurement of the Hubble constant using GW170817 and the latest observations of the electromagnetic counterpart afterglow, PRD 109, 063508 (2024)
C. Meldorf, A. Palmese & Salim, Measuring the dust attenuation law of galaxies using photometric data, MNRAS 531, 3242 (2024)
C. Bom & A. Palmese, Standard Siren Cosmology with Gravitational Waves from Binary Black Hole Mergers in Active Galaxy Nuclei, PRD, 110, 083005 (2024)
M. Bhardwaj, A. Palmese et al., GW190425 and FRB20190425A: Challenges for Fast Radio Bursts as Multi-Messenger Sources from Binary Neutron Star Mergers, arXiv:2306.00948 (2024)
A. Palmese et al., A standard siren measurement of the Hubble constant using gravitational wave events from the first three LIGO/Virgo observing runs and the DESI Legacy Survey, ApJ 943 56 (2023)
C. Meldorf, A. Palmese, D. Brout, et al., The Dark Energy Survey Supernova Program results: Type Ia Supernova brightness correlates with host galaxy dust, MNRAS 518, 1985–2004 (2023)
A. Palmese et al., Do LIGO/Virgo black hole mergers produce AGN flares? The case of GW190521 and prospects for reaching a confident association, ApJ 914, L34 (2021)
A. Palmese and C. J. Conselice, GW190521 from the Merger of Ultra-Dwarf Galaxies, PRL 126, 181103 (2021)
Y. Tsai, A. Palmese, S. Profumo, T. Jeltema, Is GW170817 a Multimessenger Neutron Star-Primordial Black Hole Merger?, JCAP 10, 019 (2021)
A. Palmese et al., A statistical standard siren measurement of the Hubble constant from the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave compact object merger GW190814 and Dark Energy Survey galaxies, ApJ 900, 2, L33 (2020)
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