STARS II: current challenges, upcoming solutions

16 Jun 2025, 08:30 → 20 Jun 2025, 18:00 Europe/Rome

Bologna

---

The STARS conference is a biennial meeting dedicated to the Italian stellar astrophysics community. "STARS II: current challenges, upcoming solutions" brings together researchers in stellar astrophysics to promote meaningful discussions, collaborations, and advancements in our field.

---

The conference will cover a wide range of topics in stellar astrophysics, including theoretical models and observational studies of stars in the local universe. Specifically, the meeting will focus on stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis, open and globular star clusters, local dwarf galaxies, the dynamics and evolution of the Galactic disc, bulge and halo. Special attention will be given to the role of upcoming large-scale surveys, state-of-the-art instruments, and novel techniques, as the means to solve the most pressing current open questions of our community in the most immediate future.

A central focus of STARS II is supporting early-career scientists. We are committed to offering them significant opportunities to present their work, share ideas, and lead discussions, fostering an engaging and forward-looking environment. The key goal of STARS II is thus to trigger and encourage discussions that will shape the next generation of stellar research.

---

Important information on unsolicited requests for hotels bookings

Please note that the official partner of the "STARS II: current challenges, upcoming solutions" conference is Planning Congressi srl (https://planning.it/). We urge caution in case you receive unsolicited offers to provide hotel rooms or other services from different companies, or unsolicited phone calls requesting, e.g., to confirm your hotel reservations. We strongly advise you not to contact them or provide them with any of your personal details, and cannot accept any responsibility for adverse consequences should you choose to do so. In case of any questions, please kindly contact Planning at r.suzzi@planning.it.

Monday 16 June

09:00 → 10:20 Registration

10:20 → 10:30 Welcoming

10:30 → 12:30 Session: Chemistry of resolved stellar populations

10:30 Invited talk

Speaker: Sara Lucatello (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

11:10 The Ba puzzle, an (un-)solved puzzle

Speaker: Martina Baratella (European Southern Observatory, Chile)

11:30 High-resolution spectroscopy of metal-poor stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Speaker: Lorenzo Santarelli (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia - Università di Bologna (DIFA - UniBo))

11:50 CERES survey: chemical abundances of light neutron capture elements

Speaker: Linda Lombardo (Goethe University Frankfurt)

12:10 The Bulge Cluster Origin (BulCO) survey: first results in Liller 1

Speaker: Lanfranco Chiappino (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

12:30 → 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 → 15:40 Session: Chemistry of resolved stellar populations

14:00 Invited talk

Speaker: Donatella Romano (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

14:40 Europium, do we have a problem? Modelling r-process enrichment across Local Group galaxies

Speaker: Marco Palla (University of Bologna, INAF-OAS)

15:00 Unveiling the Chemical Enrichment with CRIMSONS

Speaker: Martina Rossi (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

15:20 Unravelling the chemical abundance patterns of the Milky Way building blocks

Speaker: Alice MORI (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Firenze)

15:40 → 16:10 Coffee break

16:10 → 17:30 Session: Chemistry of resolved stellar populations

16:10 Homogenous chemical characterisation of accreted streams in the local stellar halo

Speaker: Emma Dodd (Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University)

16:30 Tracing the evolution of the Milky Way through high-resolution spectroscopy

Speaker: Edoardo Ceccarelli (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

16:50 A Sequoia Candidate with Exceptionally High Be and Li Abundances: Hypernova or Planetary Engulfment?

Speaker: Lorenzo Monaco (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

17:10 Icarus Revisited: An Ancient, Metal-poor Accreted Stellar Stream in the Disk of the Milky Way

Speaker: Paola Re Fiorentin (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

Tuesday 17 June

09:00 → 10:40 Session: Milky Way and Local Group

09:00 Resolved stellar systems: from Globular Clusters to the Milky Way

Speaker: Ronald Drimmel (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

09:40 Myths and challenges behind the formation of the Galactic disc

Speaker: Dr Matthew Orkney (ICCUB (Universitat de Barcelona))

10:00 Exploring the history of the Milky Way halo: Integrating chemistry and kinematics for clustering analysis

Speaker: Leda Berni (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

10:20 Orbit integration with an updated potential model: insights into the globular cluster populations of the Milky Way and resonances induced by the bar

Speaker: Michele De Leo (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

10:40 → 11:10 Coffee break

11:10 → 12:30 Session: Milky Way and Local Group

11:10 Low-alpha, low-metallicity Milky Way disc stars at z>2

Speaker: Chervin Laporte (Observatoire de Paris - PSL)

11:30 Chemical Tagging and Stellar Migration with Graph Attention Networks

Speaker: Lorenzo Spina (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

11:50 The kinematics of young stars in the Milky Way disc: first results from SDSS-V

Speaker: Eleonora Zari (University of Florence)

12:10 Chemical gradients of the thin disk from a Non Local Thermal Equilibrium spectral synthesis of Cepheids

Speaker: Antonino Nunnari (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

12:30 → 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 → 15:40 Session: Milky Way and Local Group

14:00 Invited talk

Speaker: Michele Bellazzini (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

14:40 The future of astrometry in space: from Gaia DR4 to GaiaNIR

Speaker: Antonella Vallenari (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

15:00 The chrono-dynamic structure of the Large Magellanic Cloud star cluster system

Speaker: Florian Niederhofer (Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP))

15:20 Exploring the Impact of Satellite Galaxies on Milky Way Evolution

Speaker: Ingrid Beloto Latini (ICC-UB)

15:40 → 16:10 Coffee break

16:10 → 17:50 Session: Milky Way and Local Group

16:10 Status and challenges for dark matter inferences in Local Group dwarf galaxies

Speaker: Giuseppina Battaglia (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC))

16:30 Tracing the Local Group evolution with resolved stellar populations

Speaker: Dr Matteo Monelli (INAF - Osservatorio di Roma)

16:50 Dwarf-dwarf mergers and the hierarchical build-up of galaxies at the smallest scales

Speaker: Francesca Annibali (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

17:10 Unveiling nearby young stars from planet search surveys

Speaker: Silvano Desidera (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

17:30 Using a Deep Neural Network to Estimate Effective Temperatures and Derive Stellar Ages in Star-Forming Regions

Speaker: Dr Loredana Prisinzano (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

Wednesday 18 June

09:00 → 10:40 Session: Stellar variability and Star clusters

09:00 Invited talk

Speaker: Giuseppe Bono (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

09:40 The stellar age distribution of the Galactic bulge

Speaker: Annalisa Calamida

10:00 Novae as Galactic lithium factories: indications from optical and gamma-ray observations

Speaker: Luca Izzo (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

10:20 Metallicity dependence of Classical Cepheids Period-Luminosity relations

Speaker: Vincenzo Ripepi (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

10:40 → 11:10 Coffee break

11:10 → 12:30 Session: Stellar variability and Star clusters

11:10 The dynamical evolution of the stellar clumps in the Sparkler galaxy

Speaker: Dr Eric Giunchi (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia "Augusto Righi" - Università di Bologna)

11:30 Morphology and dynamics of open clusters with tidal tails

Speaker: Anna Parul (Observatoire de Paris)

11:50 A 3D view of multiple populations’ kinematics: clues on globular clusters formation and early evolution

Speaker: Emanuele Dalessandro (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

12:10 Do we really expect a metallicity spread in all stellar clusters? Not so fast, please

Speaker: Angela Bragaglia (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

12:30 → 14:00 Lunch break

Thursday 19 June

09:00 → 10:40 Session: Stellar evolution

09:00 Invited talk

Speaker: Andrea Miglio (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

09:40 Nitrogen-rich stars through the lens of asteroseismology

Speaker: Ellie Leitinger (UNIBO)

10:00 JWST unveils the brown dwarf population of the most extreme star clusters of the Milky Way: Westerlund 1 and 2

Speaker: Victor Almendros Abad (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

10:20 The nucleosythesis of massive stars: a bridge between stellar modelling and galactic archaeology

Speaker: Federico Rizzuti (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

10:40 → 11:10 Coffee break

11:10 → 12:30 Session: Stellar evolution

11:10 High-Precision Ages and Abundances: Unlocking the Milky Way's History

Speaker: Dr Giada Casali (Australian National University (ANU), Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

11:30 Simulating the populations of binaries and products of binary interactions in the Kepler's field

Speaker: Alessandro Mazzi (Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia "Augusto Righi")

11:50 Semi-analytical models of core-helium-burning stars: Structural glitches near the core

Speaker: Dr Massimiliano Matteuzzi (Università di Bologna, INAF - OAS)

12:10 ÆSOPUS 2.1: low-temperature gas opacities library and its application in stellar models

Speaker: Diego Bossini (Università degli studi di Padova)

12:30 → 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 → 15:40 Session: Stellar evolution

14:00 Invited talk

Speaker: Scilla Degl'Innocenti (Università di Pisa)

14:40 Testing the asteroseismic estimates of stellar radii with surface brightness-colour relations and Gaia DR3 parallaxes

Speaker: Pier Giorgio Prada Moroni (Università di Pisa)

15:00 Physics for stellar interiors, recent advancements

Speaker: Oscar Straniero (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

15:20 The impact of stellar evolution uncertainties on binaries

Speaker: Erika Korb (Università di Padova)

15:40 → 16:10 Coffee break

16:10 → 17:30 Session: Stellar evolution

16:10 New sets of PARSEC v2.0 stellar model for low-metallicity

Speaker: Chi Thanh Nguyen (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

16:30 New grids of PARSEC evolutionary tracks, with final fates, ejecta, and ionizing photons from intermediate-mass to very massive stars

Speaker: Guglielmo Costa (University of Lyon 1)

16:50 The Milky Way traced by pulsating stars: theory versus observations

Speaker: Marcella Marconi (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

17:10 Unveiling Carbon Stars Properties in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds

Speaker: Alessio Liberatori (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)

19:30 → 22:30 Social Dinner at "Ristorante La Capriata", Corte Isolani, 1e, 40125 Bologna BO

The dinner will be at "Ristorante La Capriata", Corte Isolani, 1e, 40125 Bologna BO

Friday 20 June

09:20 → 10:40 Session: Machine learning

09:20 Invited talk

Speaker: Umberto Michelucci

10:00 Deep Learning-driven MCMC for fast and accurate stellar spectroscopy

Speaker: Cristiano Fanelli (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

10:20 1-DREAM and model based ML techniques for low-dimensional structure identification in the MW halo

Speaker: Marco canducci (University of Birmingham)

10:40 → 11:10 Coffee break

11:10 → 12:30 Session: Discussion

12:30 → 14:00 Lunch break