Dr. María Alejandra De Vito is an Associate Professor at the National University of La Plata (Universidad Nacional de La Plata), Argentina. She is an Independent Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, CONICET), working at the Institute of Astrophysics of La Plata (Instituto de Astrofísica de La Plata). She has been a member and director of scientific research projects in Argentina. She participates in the supervision and co-supervision of undergraduate and graduate (PhD) students. She also carries out science outreach activities.

She graduated from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where she also obtained her PhD. Her research field is theoretical astrophysics. She focuses on the study of close binary systems in which mass transfer occurs through Roche-lobe overflow. She works with numerical models obtained using a binary evolution code that was entirely developed within her research group, GESBi (Grupo de Evolución en Sistemas Binarios, Binary Systems Evolutionary Group). Specifically, she studies systems with low- and intermediate-mass donor stars and a compact object companion. These systems have observational counterparts in X-ray binaries.

The main objectives of her visit to the IAC are to interact with Dr. Gastón Escobar, Dr. Sergio Simón Díaz, and the research groups Massive Stars and Compact Objects, and to participate as a lecturer in the XXXVII Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics; Massive stars as cosmic tools from birth to core collapse SNe and GW events, which will take place in La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, from 16 to 27 November 2026. She will give lectures on “Evolution of massive stars in binary systems “.

During her stay, Dr. De Vito will give a seminar at the IAC entitled “Compact objects in close binary systems: studying some properties of white dwarfs and black holes in the context of binaries”.