People of TALES – Meet Natale De Bonis
- Could you tell us a few words about your background?
I was born in a very small city in the south of Italy called Paludi. I used to say that more animals than people lived there, since it’s a rural area. After studying in Calabria, I went to Naples to study Physics for my Bachelor’s Degree. And as soon as I took my first AstroPhysics course, I was hooked on it, and chose the Master’s in Astrophysics, also in Naples.
- What is the most exciting thing about your job?
In my opinion, it is the amusing sensation of learning something new. Each day, our knowledge gets challenged and enlarged by a discovery or theory. To me, the fact that we are such small creatures on one small planet in the corner of the Milky Way, and that we are trying to explain how the universe works, is simply amazing.
- Why did you choose to become a scientist?
Since I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a scientist. In my mind, as a kid, a scientist was someone with white robes and glassware doing experiments. Slowly but surely growing up, I came closer and closer to physics, and since I grew up gazing at as a kid I grew up closer and closer to astrophysics.
- What is the main focus of your PhD project?
The main focus of my PhD is to study the accretion disk around supermassive black holes by using state-of-the-art machine learning and AI models.
Figure Caption: (Left) Natale on Fisherman Bastion in Budapest, Hungary. (Right) Natale during a snowfall in Belgrade, Serbia.
- What do you do for fun?
I am a big nerd so, for fun, I usually read some comics or watch movies or tv series. I also like playing live role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. But I think that my ultimate passion is travelling and discovering cultures different from mine.
