Severo Ochoa Programme

SO Contracted Personnel

Advanced Fellow
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I got my Ph.D. degree in Physics by the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) in 2018, with a thesis about the properties and evolution of high-frequency waves and instabilities in the solar atmosphere. Then, I stayed at the UIB during one year working as a support researcher for the Institute of Applied Computing with Community Code. In February 2019, I joined the Solar Physics Group of the IAC as a postdoc of the PI2FA project, and in February 2021 I started my current position as a Severo Ochoa Postdoctoral Researcher. My main field of research is the physics of partially ionized plasmas, particularly of those present in the solar atmosphere. Using multi-fluid models, I perform analytical and numerical investigations about the effect that collisions between the different species in a plasma have on wave propagation, plasma heating and instabilities. I am also interested on the research of other non-ideal mechanisms that affect the dynamics of solar plasmas and on the study of coronal rain.

Advanced Fellow
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I studied Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) and I graduated in Physics at the ULL. My interest in investigating quantum and stellar physics jointly led me to obtain my PhD as Resident Astrophysicist at the IAC (2009-2013), where I specialized in polarized radiative transfer in the solar chromosphere through simulations of dynamic spectropolarimetric signals with atomic polarization and Hanle effect. From 2013 to 2017 I was a postdoctoral researcher at IRSOL (Locarno, Switzerland). There I worked investigating improvements in the theory of spectral line polarization, simulating the temporal evolution of the solar polarization and observing it with the ZIMPOL spectropolarimeter. Since 2018 I have obtained two postdoctoral positions at the IAC and I developed models able to explain anomalous polarization signals in order to improve the diagnosis of solar and stellar magnetic fields. My interests encompass everything related to the polarization of light in astrophysics, from its theoretical description (quantum physics, Hanle and Zeeman effects, radiative transfer models) up to its simulation (numerical methods, solar MHD models) and observation/analysis (data science, AI techniques).

Advanced Fellow
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I obtained my PhD at the University of La Laguna in 2014. My first postdoc was in the University of Oxford (UK) where I was funded by the Oxford University's exoplanet research group and robotics research group. I returned to the IAC as a generic postdoc at the end of 2016, and I finally become an Advanced Severo Ochoa Fellow in 2021. My research interests are mainly focused on extrasolar planets, Bayesian statistics, and the use of modern numerical methods in astronomy.

Advanced Fellow
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All along my research career and the various international institutions I have worked in, I have developed a transdisciplinary profile bridging molecular physics and various aspects of stellar spectroscopy. I started my research career between France, Germany and United States looking for the most ancient stars in the Galaxy and constrain their nucleosynthesis. I then moved to Belgium where I studied molecular physics and its application to high resolution spectroscopy and stellar atmospheres. Thanks to these newly acquired skills and my strong experience in stellar spectroscopy, I have been deeply involved in large spectroscopic surveys (Gaia-ESO in UK and APOGEE at IAC) that lead me to study several resolved Galactic populations (halo, disks, globular clusters) and chemical evolution. More recently, the same skills brought me to get involved in projects concerning the detection of exoplanets and their characterization.

Advanced Fellow
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I obtained my PhD at the ULL in 2006. Then I moved to Mexico as a postdoc researcher and came back to the IAC in 2009, as support astronomer of the Canary Islands observatories until 2014. Since then I have obtained several postdocs at the IAC and since March 2021 I am a Severo Ochoa Advanced Postdoc of the Stellar and Interstellar Physics research line. My main research interest is the determination of heavy-element chemical abundances in the ionized interstellar medium. I am currently working on precise abundance determinations using weak emission lines in planetary nebulae and HII regions, both in our galaxy and in nearby galaxies, and in the use of these precise abundances determinations for constraining stellar nucleosynthesis models and chemical evolution models of galaxies.

Advanced Fellow
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Susana Iglesias Groth has a degree in Physics, specializing in Astrophysics. She did her PhD at the Fundamental Physics Department II at the University of La Laguna (ULL) as an external collaborator, at the time she was a Physics and Chemistry teacher at Secondary Education (teacher for 13 years, 1990- 2003). She obtained a PhD on Molecular Physics from the ULL in June 2003. Since 2003 she has done post-doctoral research at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), first, for the PACS instrument of the Herschel satellite and, since 2008, with a contract for the characterization and behavior of hydrogenated fullerenes in astrophysical conditions, and that of PAHs in the interstellar medium. Then she got a generic post-doc position in the IAC that allowed her to extend these investigations to the amino acids. In recent years she has worked at the IAC for the Euclid satellite science (planned launch2021), preparing its scientific exploitation in the field of carbon chemistry in ultra-luminous sub- millimeter galaxies. She has published 69 research articles in refereed journals of Astrophysics and Molecular Physics, out of which 25 as first author and 28 as second author.

Advanced Fellow
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Advanced Fellow
Advanced Fellow
Jairo Méndez Abreu
Jairo Méndez Abreu
POSTDOC "VIERA Y CLAVIJO"
Advanced Fellow
Advanced Fellow
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Advanced Fellow
Advanced Fellow
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Andrés Balaguera-Antolínez is a colombian physicist (bachellor in Physics at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, MSc in Physics at Universidad de los Andes). He obtained his Ph.D in Astronomy in 2011 at the University Ludwig Maximillian of Munich, through the IMPRS fellowship developed at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. He has 10 years of postdoctoral experience in the field of cosmology and the large-scale structure of the Universe, working ast Argelander Insitute for Astronomy (Bonn) and Roma3 University (Rome). He has co-authored a number of publications in the field of theoretical and observational cosmology and has led the cosmological analysis of a variety of extra-galactic samples (e.g. X-ray samples, spectroscopic, photometric and radio-samples). He has collaborated within the Euclid mission providing a number of prototype codes to measure the galaxy clustering signal for cosmological analysis, and actively participates in collaborations such as DESI and JPAS, in subjects such as mock catalogs, clustering analysis and target selection for large-scale structure. He is the leader of the CosmicAtlas project and main developer of the BAM algorithm, envisaged to explore theoretical aspects of the large scale structure of the Universe and generate galaxy mock catalogs for the largest galaxy surveys.

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Michael Beasley
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Michael Beasley
INVESTIGADOR/A POSTDOCTORAL
Postdoc
Postdoc
PhD Students
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I studied my Bachelor’s Degree in Physics at the University of La Laguna, finishing with a project about solar neutrino problem, supervised by Teodoro Roca Cortés. Then, I studied the Masters in Astrophysics, also at the University of La Laguna, finishing with a final project on the measurement of the pressure on solar photosphere using the inversion method SIR, supervised by Basilio Ruiz Cobo. Afterwards, I worked on a start-up on the development of apps for the aviation sector, coming back to astrophysics with a three-month stay at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, working on a CMEs related project. Now I am doing my PhD on the detection of active regions on the non-visible hemisphere of the Sun with deep learning tools, supervised by Tobias Felipe and Andrés Asensio. Results from my thesis will be useful to improve space weather forecasting on effects of solar activity on technological and biological systems on Earth.

PhD Students
PhD Students
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I graduated in Physics from the Universitat de les Illes Balears (UIB) and I continued my studies by taking a Master's degree in Astrophysics at the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL). It was during the Master's Final Project when I was introduced to the world of exoplanets and I decided to do my PhD in this booming field. My thesis project, directed by Dr. Felipe Murgas and Prof. Enric Pallé, aims to study and characterise planetary atmospheres at high resolution. Combining data from the most accurate spectrographs such as ESPRESSO, HARPS-N or CARMENES and using different analysis techniques such as transmission spectra and cross-correlation, the presence of atoms, ions and molecules can be detected. This analysis is mainly focused on the infrared light range, for the detection of helium, water and other molecules in the atmospheres of distant planets.

PhD Students
PhD Students
PhD Students
PhD Students
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I studied the bachelor in physics at the University of Valencia and then the master's degree in Advanced Physics in the specialty of Theoretical Physics at the same place. I did my master thesis on "Neutrino non-standard interactions" in the group of Astroparticles and High Energy Physics of the Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC, joint institute between CSIC and the UV). After a two-month stay at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany), I was employed for a year in the same group at IFIC working on theoretical neutrino physics. With the FPI-Severo Ochoa grant I came to the IAC to carry out my PhD in the Astroparticles Theory group, supervised by Dr. Jorge Martín Camalich. My thesis consists on studying extensions of the standard model of particle physics and its phenomenology derived from particle laboratories such as CERN and bridge it to their possible astrophysical and cosmological implications. For example, we will study the impact of potential new light particles such as the axion or sterile neutrinos in star evolution or possible effects of dark matter clusters between sources of radio and microwave emission and the Earth, which can give us information about the properties of the particles that constitute the dark matter. All this with the support of the observations of our colleagues from the IAC.

Engineer
Engineer
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Engineer
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Engineer
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Engineer
Engineer
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Antonio Félix Moreno Martín
Engineer