Pedro Bernardinelli was born in São Paulo, Brazil and completed his undergraduate studies in Physics at the University of São Paulo. After that, he got his Ph.D from University of Pennsylvania, focusing on the development and application of new techniques for the discovery and characterization of the most distant bodies in our Solar System, trans-Neptunian objects, as a member of the Dark Energy Survey (DES).

As part of this research, Pedro has led the discovery of over 600 TNOs and the comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), the largest Oort-cloud comet ever found. His research also has had deep applications to the Planet 9 hypothesis, as well as to current models of the trans-Neptunian region.

At the University of Washington, Pedro is excited to expand this research to current surveys, as well as upcoming projects such as the DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP) and the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

Pedro is also generally interested in astronomical data analysis and image reduction techniques, going from precise astrometry and photometry to detection of faint sources. Before the pandemic started, Pedro was one of the hosts and organizers of Astronomy on Tap Philly.

Outside academia, Pedro is interested in photography, fantasy/sci-fi literature, board and video games, cooking, baking, and is a great coffee enthusiast.

Read more on Pedro’s Website, and follow Twitter,  Github, ADS Publications.