Massimiliano Parente, currently a post-doc at the Trieste Observatory, won the 2025 edition of the "Pietro Tacchini" prize from SAIt, awarded for the best doctoral thesis in astronomy and astrophysics. During his PhD, carried out at SISSA until September 2024, he conducted his research primarily at our observatory, under the scientific supervision of Gian Luigi Granato and Cinthia Ragone Figueroa. His research focused on integrating processes related to the evolution of cosmic dust into both hydrodynamic simulations and semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. He also investigated the impact of this component of the interstellar medium on galaxy evolution and its visibility. Massimiliano's thesis begins with a historical overview of dust modelling in galaxy evolution simulations, tracing the development from early chemical one-zone models to modern semi-analytic and hydrodynamic approaches. The thesis then continues with a description of the original contributions. The first was calibrating and testing a dust evolution treatment within hydrodynamic models, which led to a peer-reviewed paper demonstrating how the model can explain observed dust properties in galaxies. He then implemented a similar treatment into the public L-Galaxies semi-analytic model, resulting in three additional papers. These three studies respectively examine cosmic dust evolution, dust distribution in the cosmic web, and sub-millimetre emission in Green Valley galaxies, providing new insights into the connection between dust abundance, supermassive black hole growth, and star formation.
