Although we can see countless stars in the sky, theoretical physics shows that the universe mostly comprises dark energy and matter. Cosmologist Elisa Ferreira is working to unravel the mysteries of dark matter, which is still poorly understood.

Ferreira earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the University of São Paulo and her doctorate from McGill University in Canada. She is a member of international collaborations such as the Prime Focus Spectrograph and the BINGO telescope, and she currently works as a lecturer at USP and a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany. Ferreira’s project proposes ultracold matter as a promising candidate for solving the mystery of dark matter. Ferreira’s work is at the forefront of research on dark matter, and her findings could help us better to understand the universe and our place in it.