FRANCESCA VIDOTTO is a theoretical physicist at the University of Western Ontario, where she is assistant professor in both the Department of Applied Mathematics and the Department of Philosophy. Her work is focused on Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG), one of the main approaches to the quantization of gravity. It has been approximately a decade since the techniques of loop quantization were first used in cosmology, giving life to an active sub-field, that goes under the name of Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC). In LQG, the dynamics can be expressed using two different languages: the canonical one, given using a Hamiltonian, and the covariant one, where dynamics is coded by a transition amplitude obtained summing over histories. The Spinfoam theory is this covariant version of LQG. In this formalism the amplitudes give the probability to pass from a given configuration of space-time to another.
Vidotto has applied for the first time the covariant formalism to cosmology. She has proposed a covariant version of quantum cosmology based on the complete LQG quantum theory (where symmetries are not implemented before the quantization). This is a new approach to quantum cosmology, called Spinfoam Cosmology.