PI ASSESSMENTS -- European Research Council 2022:
REVIEWER 1
"Outstanding candidate with an exceptional track record in all aspects."
Grade: EXCEPTIONAL
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REVIEWER 2
"Dr. Gaspari has a very strong CV, where after the 2012 PhD at Bologna, he passed through Max Planck institute, obtained a NASA Einstein fellowship, and became associate researcher at Princeton. He has developed and used advanced MHD solvers, has experience with AMR and massively parallel simulations, and has lectured on relevant topics at Bologna University. He plays an active role to organize workshop (cycles), and is well integrated in many collaborations (especially those related to feedback and multiphase AGN physics). Many of the ongoing grants connect to specific telescopes/observing campaigns, ensuring a strong connection with observations. The number and quality of his papers (and their impact) is outstanding, with e.g. the Chaotic Cold Accretion work from 2013 being a milestone paper in the field. The PI actively pursues research grants at all funding levels and is very successful in gaining observing and computing programs."
Grade: EXCEPTIONAL
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REVIEWER 3
"Dr. Gaspari has unique expertise in numerical studies of gas thermodynamics, MHD, turbulence, and AGN feeding/feedback processes. His research has been recognized by international prizes and fellowships, and by the allocation of 100+M core-hrs on HPC supercomputers."
Grade: EXCELLENT
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REVIEWER 4
"The PI Dr. Gaspari is ideally placed to carry out and supervise a large team. He has access to a one of its kind numerical tool, to which he made direct contributions. The CCA model under investigation was pioneered and popularized by the applicant himself. He is also involved in multiple observing campaigns and has an excellent track record, evidenced by past high impact publications and through winning competitive fellowships."
Grade: EXCELLENT/EXCEPTIONAL
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REVIEWER 5
"Dr. Gaspari has done an admirable job of identifying the key issues and describing how to surmount them. Given the proposer's prior expertise, I expect wise choices to be made resulting in considerable progress. Each piece of the outlined scientific approach is feasible."
Grade: EXCEPTIONAL
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REVIEWER 6
"Dr. Gaspari has a demonstrated leadership in the field. The PI has proven independent thinking and will be in full capacity to lead this ambitious project."
Grade: EXCELLENT
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REVIEWER: FULL PANEL
"The PI Dr. Gaspari proposal has an excellent track record and is ideally suited to undertake the compute-intensive work at hand and address some of the central challenges in the astrophysics of the coevolution of galaxies and MBHs. The PI has all the relevant expertise to make significant progress in all of the areas described."
Grade: A (max -- fully meets ERC's excellence criterion)
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PI ASSESSMENTS -- European Research Council 2019:
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REVIEWER 1
"Dr. Gaspari has an impressive record of excellent publications in this field, all of which relate to the physics to be investigated in this project. His publications have a high citation count, which is all the more meritorious given that they generally involve a small number of authors."
Grade: EXCEPTIONAL
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REVIEWER 2
"The PI has undoubtedly proven the ability to conduct ground-breaking research at the highest academic levels.
His work on black hole feeding & feedback, and his discovery of a new mode of accretion (chaotic cold accretion, or CCA), opened new windows on the study of galaxies, black holes and their environment, and contributed to propel him at the forefront of theoretical galaxy evolution research.
His independent thinking qualities and high-level professionalism are internationally recognised in the astrophysical community.
Besides his proven record of advanced computational skills, the PI is also known for his uncommonly profound knowledge of physics, that led him to provide seminal results. Last but not least, the PI is one of the (still) few astrophysicist capable of truly integrating theory and observations, in a cross-disciplinary framework that is very much needed to progress in our understanding of the Universe, but still rarely implemented. This testifies his creative thinking capacity and lateral thinking skills.
These qualities established him as one of the best astrophysicist in the world in the field of theoretical galaxy evolution studies.
Overall, the PI’s outstanding academic background, his technical skills and leadership abilities, prove that he is in the best position to lead his team towards a successful execution of the proposed project."
Grade: EXCEPTIONAL
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REVIEWER 3
"Dr. Gaspari is an active researcher mainly working on high energy phenomena associated with AGNs using numerical methods. His scope to the observations is also wide. The papers (especially his first-author papers) have a lot of citations, which means that his work has a large impact. He also has several (co)mentoring experiences of postdocs and students. I think that Dr. Gaspari has sufficient capacity to lead this proposed project to success. His firm skills and experiences make this proposal very robust."
Grade: EXCELLENT
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REVIEWER 4
"Dr. Gaspari is an exceptional individual, with only perfect scores in his education record. He has been awarded multiple prize winning fellowships, and has a fantastic publication record for his career stage, with 80% of his publications not involving his Ph.D. supervisor."
Grade: EXCEPTIONAL
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REVIEWER 5
"Dr. Gaspari has an excellent publication record and his citation rate for first-author papers is quite remarkable. Most paper only have a few coauthors. Good h-index.
He has held a whole series of prestigious postdoctoral fellowships."
Grade: EXCELLENT/EXCEPTIONAL
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REVIEWER 6
"Dr. Gaspari is a talented early-career scientist with a very strong CV. He has already demonstrated his innovative approach and forward thinking, proposing new ideas and modelling, and publishing them in well-cited paper. He is recognised as one of the experts in the field of AGN feedback and, the proposed project, is an ambitious expansion of what he has built."
Grade: EXCEPTIONAL
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REVIEWER 7
"Dr. Gaspari has an outstanding track record for a researcher of his academic age. He has demonstrated leadership of complex projects involving hydrodynamic simulations and high energy astrophysics."
Grade: EXCELLENT
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REVIEWER 8
"The PI Dr. Massimo Gaspari is an internationally well-known early-career scholar on the intracluster medium in clusters and groups of galaxies. He is best known for his work on thermal instabilities in clusters, and for promoting the idea of 'chaotic cold accretion'. He has published several innovative works on AGN feedback in galaxy groups and clusters as well. His publication record establishes him as a productive researcher who has already achieved significant impact for his career stage. His successful record in obtaining high-profile research scholarships and grants demonstrates his leadership potential. I do think he has the skill and maturity to lead a research group on his own."
Grade: EXCELLENT
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