Prof. Ricci is an Associate Professor at the Department of Astronomy since May 2025. He is a member of the AAS editorial board, where he serves as scientific editor for the AAS journals (i.e. ApJ, ApJL and ApJS). He is also a long-term visiting professor at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, in China, and an affiliated faculty at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of George Mason University, Fairfax, USA.

The group of Prof. Ricci is focussed on the study of accreting supermassive black holes across the whole multi-wavelength spectrum, and works on several interconnected research themes.

The circumnuclear environment of AGN. The group investigates the nature and evolution of the obscuring material surrounding SMBHs. Within the BASS survey, the group contributes to building the largest database of broadband X-ray and multi-wavelength properties of local AGN, including a significant population of heavily obscured sources, which will serve as a benchmark for studies of high-redshift sources. Future efforts will include the use of XRISM to study the physical and chemical properties of the circumnuclear gas through high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy. The group is also part of the AXIS and NewAthena science teams, which will advance studies of obscured AGN populations and their inner regions in the X-ray band.

AGN accretion and variability. The group explores how SMBHs grow through accretion and how their activity varies over time, with a strong emphasis on time-domain surveys such as LSST. Their work includes the coordination of AGN follow-up and spectroscopic studies within the 4MOST/CHANGES collaboration, which will target LSST-identified AGN transients. These efforts are supported by ALERCE, a real-time event classification broker that uses machine learning to process transient alerts. The group is also investigating nearby super-Eddington AGN using X-ray, radio/mm and new IR (JWST) data to probe extreme accretion flows. In parallel, the group is working on the mm continuum emission from nearby AGN, to study the properties of the millimeter emission from hot plasma near SMBHs. In this context the group is contributing to AtLAST, a proposed next-generation 50-meter class single-dish mm/submm observatory.

SMBH/galaxy co-evolution. Using ALMA and JWST, the group studies the interplay between AGN activity and star formation. Within the GATOS and GOALS collaboration, the group analyses gas flows and dust structures on scales of hundreds of parsecs, as well as the properties of luminous infrared galaxies in the local Universe