Dr Rita Teixeira da Costa, originally from Portugal, now works in Mathematical Physics sharing her time between the Princeton Gravity Initiative in the US and the Center for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge. During her time at Trinity, Rita has studied several problems arising in Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. Her biggest focus is on the stability properties of black holes, one of the most (in)famous predictions of this theory.

In this talk, Rita explains how mathematical tools from Geometry and Analysis can help us shed some light into these dark objects.