Severo Ochoa Programme

Occident Foundation visitors

Occident Foundation Logo1

The IAC has been chosen by the Occident Foundation to participate in its “Visiting Researchers Programme”. On 15 December 2022 the Agreement with the Occident Foundation for collaboration in the "Occident Foundation - Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias visiting researcher programme" was published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) no. 300. This agreement involves the creation of a joint programme between the two entities for the period 2023-2025 with the aim of attracting visiting professors and researchers of outstanding international prestige to carry out short stays of one to three months at the IAC with the objective, on the one hand, of deepening the scientific relationship between the host research group and the visiting researcher's centre and, on the other, of initiating possible lines of joint action aimed at generating new scientific interests. 

In April 2023 an Addendum was made to modify the Agreement between the Occident Foundation and the IAC to include high-profile engineers as part of the visiting researcher programme. 

Each year, the programme supports stay of one - three months at the IAC for visiting professors, researchers of international prestige, and high-profile engineers. 

Within the framework of this mobility programme, the Severo Ochoa Coordination Committee (CCSO), in charge of the coordination, management and monitoring of the aforementioned agreement, proposed to the Occident Foundation a list of possible visiting researchers / professors / engineers for the year 2023, which was approved and has been implemented. 

The funding scheme offered by the Occident Foundation consists of: maximum funding of 3000 euros /month. This scheme will accommodate to the standard rules of the IAC for "Bolsas de Viaje para Visitantes". In any case diets to be claimed shall refer to those in force in national territory according to Royal Decree 462/2002. According to this Royal Decree, the visiting researcher with a longer stay of one month, could be reimbursed with up to 80% of the maximum per diem, i.e 2400 €/month for accommodation & subsistence, not being necessary invoices related to such concepts.

Since the Occident Foundation-IAC collaboration began in 2014, about 50 scientists have already participated in this programme.

Researchers who have visited the IAC under this programme -or will visit it in the near future- are listed below:

  • Dr. Leticia Carigi
    DR. LETICIA CARIGI (Instituto de Astronomía, UNAM)
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    Dr. Leticia Carigi obtained the PhD at the Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomía in Mérida, Venezuela. She later joined the Instituto de Astronomía (IA) of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), first as a postdoctoral fellow, and is currently a full researcher at this institute. Dr. Carigi has held important positions at UNAM, among
  • Dra. Evanthia Hatziminaoglou
    DRA. EVANTHIA HATZIMINAOGLOU (European Southern Observatory - ESO, Alemania)
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    Dr Evanthia Hatziminaoglou is a senior astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching, Germany, an expert in operations of large astronomical structures, director of the ALMA Regional Centre (ARC; 2022 - 2024), former deputy head of the ARC (2019 - 2022), and former coordinator of the European ARC user support network (2014-2020)
  • Natalia Shchukina
    DRA. NATALIA SHCHUKINA (Main Astronomical Observatory of the NASU, Ukraine)
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    Dr. Natalia Shchukina is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU) and a senior scientist at the Department of Solar Physics of the Main Astronomical Observatory of NASU. Her research interests cover several areas of astrophysics, such as multilevel radiative transfer, solar and stellar spectropolarimetry, solar magnetism
  • Davide Massari
    DR. DAVIDE MASSARI (Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, INAF, Italia)
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    Dr. Davide Massari's research focuses on the formation and evolution of the Milky Way using stars and star clusters as tracers. Recently, he has been one of the main contributors to the revolution in this field, triggered by the Gaia mission, as he has observationally discovered the "Kraken" merging event (Massari et al. 2019) and contributed to
  • Julian Sitarek
    DR. JULIAN SITAREK (Universidad de Lodz, Polonia)
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    Dr. Julian Sitarek is a senior researcher at the University of Lodz, Poland. He received his PhD in 2011 and habilitation in 2016. He completed his PhD studies with a fellowship (2007-2010) at the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany. Between 2011 and 2014, Dr. Sitarek completed a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral stay at the Institut
  • Noelia Martínez
    PROF. DR. NOELIA MARTÍNEZ (Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, ANU, Australia)
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    Dr. Noelia Martínez did her PhD thesis as a resident at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) with the topic "Pioneering use of an Adaptive Optics plenoptic system for free-space communications", graduating in 2019. Previously, she worked as an electronic engineer at the European Space Agency (ESO) and at the IAC (2014-2016). After three