I am an astrophysicist studying some of the most fascinating beasts of the Universe: supermassive black holes. These objects are found at the center of most galaxies and, when they accrete, can become the brightest persistent sources of radiation in the Cosmos. Supermassive black holes are also believed to play an important role in the life of their host galaxies, and might therefore hold the keys to understanding how galaxies evolve through Cosmic time.

I am an Assistant Professor at the Nucleo de Astronomia of the Universidad Diego Portales, in Santiago, Chile. I am also a long-term visiting professor at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, in China.
My research is focussed on the structure and evolution of the material around supermassive black holes, combining X-ray spectroscopy with multi-wavelentgth observations. I am part of the core team of the Swift/BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey (BASS), and of the science team of the hard X-ray NASA mission NuSTAR.
I moved to Santiago in February 2015, after spending two years at the Department of Astronomy of Kyoto University, in Japan, as a JSPS fellow. At Kyoto University I was involved in the preparation for the Japanese-led X-ray satellite ASTRO-H.

I obtained my PhD in December 2011, the title of my PhD dissertation was Active Galactic Nuclei at hard X-rays: Absorption, Reflection and the Unified Model. My PhD work was carried out at the Data Centre for Astrophysics (ISDC), part of the Department of Astronomy of the University of Geneva, in Switzerland. At the ISDC I also worked on the development of the filter wheel for the X-ray spectrometer on board ASTRO-H.

My mail address: claudio.ricci@mail.udp.cl