Fabio Pacucci

Fabio Pacucci is an Italian-American astrophysicist and science communicator, currently a Staff Astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. His research focuses on black holes, quasars, high-redshift galaxies, and dark matter, with special attention to the formation and growth of the first black holes, known as black hole seeds. He led the discovery of the first candidate direct collapse black holes and helped identify the most distant gravitationally-lensed quasar and galaxy observed before the James Webb Space Telescope era. Recently, Pacucci has played a key role in studying Little Red Dots, compact early-Universe sources discovered by JWST. Alongside his scientific work, Pacucci is an active science communicator and has collaborated with TED, Scientific American, Sky & Telescope, and The Conversation while engaging in public outreach through talks and media.