Professor Giovanna Tinetti is to become the next Vice Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences, King’s College London.
A Professor of Astrophysics and Head of Astrophysics Group at UCL, she has been the Director of the UCL Centre for Space Exochemistry Data at Harwell since 2018.
Professor Tinetti will join King’s in June 2025 and will provide academic leadership and strategic direction for the Faculty’s research agenda, with the aim of fostering research excellence and ensuring researchers are at the forefront of developing innovative solutions to current and future global challenges.
Her responsibilities will include overseeing the Faculty’s research strategy, strengthening the breadth of research activity across the five disciplines, supporting the development of multidisciplinary research including through the Faculty's research centres, and providing oversight of the Graduate School and the recruitment of PhD students.
Professor Tinetti is the Principal Investigator of the European Space Agency’s Ariel - the only space telescope undertaking a comprehensive survey of exoplanets in a wide variety of environments, which will launch in 2029. She is also co-founder and co-director of Blue Skies Space Ltd, which is developing a new class of satellites to provide high-quality data to the global scientific community.
Giovanna has a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Turin. During her career she has worked at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, and was the ‘Enrico Fermi’ Chair at La Sapienza, University of Rome. She joined UCL in 2007 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow.
She has authored and co-authored over 300 research publications. These include the paper with the highest altmetric score among Physical Sciences in 2019. She has delivered over 350 talks, seminars and public lectures internationally.
Professor Rachel Bearon, Executive-Dean of NMES, said, “I am delighted that Professor Tinetti will be joining the Faculty Leadership Team. She has fantastic experience of leading inter-disciplinary team science, bringing together fundamental research from the Natural Sciences with AI and new technologies to deliver exciting and impactful science.”
Professor Giovanna Tinetti said “I am honoured and humbled to help lead the NMES Faculty to new scientific heights, in the shadow of giants like Maxwell and Bondi, that have been among King’s most renowned scientists.”