Roberto Maiolino is an astrophysicist who studies the formation and evolution of galaxies using observations collected at some of the largest ground-based and space telescopes. Among several research highlights in this area, he has obtained key results on the interplay between galaxy evolution and the supermassive black holes at their centres. He has also explored the enrichment of chemical elements across the cosmic epochs, as well as the origin and nature of dust particles in the early Universe.

He is playing a leading role in several projects, including the James Webb Space Telescope, the MOONS spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope, and the ANDES spectrograph for the Extremely Large Telescope.

Roberto is Professor of Experimental Astrophysics at the Cavendish Laboratory and at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge. He is also Honorary Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London. From 2016 to 2021 he was Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology. In 2018 he was knighted by the Italian President.