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
Jairo Méndez Abreu
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Jairo Méndez Abreu
POSTDOC "VIERA Y CLAVIJO"
Advanced Fellow
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I have a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of La Laguna (ULL; 2012), with a project on stellar populations in galaxies with multiple bars developed at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) together with Dr. Alexandre Vazdekis. My postdoctoral experience took place at the University of St Andrews (United Kingdom), the University of Granada and the Complutense University of Madrid. Between August 2021 and August 2024 I was a Severo Ochoa Advanced researcher at the IAC, after which I joined the ULL as a Ramón y Cajal researcher, a position I currently hold. In addition, I have been a visiting researcher at the Leiden Observatory and the European Space Agency in the Netherlands, the European Southern Observatory in Germany and the Center for Astronomical Technology in the United Kingdom (stay funded by the Severo Ochoa scheme of the IAC).

I develop two main lines of research: the formation of stellar structures in galaxies and their role in galactic evolution, with particular attention to the case of star bars, and the analysis of galaxies analogous to the Milky Way and their place in the model. of evolution of the Universe. At a technical level, I am dedicated to the spectral and photometric analysis of galaxies and their stellar populations. I am or have been part of some of the main international collaborations dedicated to the aforementioned topics (CALIFA, TIMER, AGN-STORM, Composite Bulges, BEARD, the HARMONI consortium of the IAC...) and I am co-principal investigator of the Generation Project CoBEARD Knowledge, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Committed to scientific dissemination and the visibility of the contribution of women in Astrophysics, I am the creator of the “Astrophysics Drawer” section of the newspaper El Día and the activity “Chat with an Astronomer” of the Spanish Astronomy Society. among many other initiatives. I also dedicate part of my free time to actions to achieve gender equality in the scientific field at an institutional, national and international level.

Advanced Fellow
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I obtained my PhD from the University of La Laguna in 2013, focused on the characterization of the stellar properties of massive galaxies. Island hopping, I went to Hawaii to work as a postdoc at the Japanese Subaru Telescope, where I focused on understanding the nature of massive relic galaxies. Then I spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne), where my interest focused on the lowest mass galaxies, and in 2018 I obtained the 'Junior Leader Fellowship' from la Caixa, which allowed me to return to Barcelona ( ICCUB) with a project to characterize the least luminous galaxies. In 2021, with a 'Severo Ochoa Advanced Fellowship', I returned to the IAC, where I currently have a Ramón y Cajal contract since 2023. In recent years I have unified my lines of research by characterizing the properties of different types of galaxies at different times. of the Universe and from a multi-spectral approach, in order to better understand the paradigm of the formation and evolution of galaxies. At the IAC I am part of the TRACES (IP) and Nuclear Activity in Galaxies group, and I am also the coordinator of the Severo Ochoa Galaxies line (since the end of 2023).

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.

Advanced Fellow
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PhD in Astrophysics in 2009 from the University of La Laguna, Julia de León currently works at the IAC as a Distinguished Researcher and leads the Solar System Group. Her area of expertise is the study of the physical and compositional properties of small bodies in our planetary system, including asteroids, comets, and icy objects, particularly near-Earth asteroids, with a special focus on those classified as potentially hazardous. She has authored over a hundred scientific publications in high-impact journals, has been the Principal Investigator (PI) of 6 research projects (Government of the Canary Islands, National Plan, EU), has supervised 3 doctoral theses, and has participated in numerous space missions dedicated to studying asteroids and comets, such as Rosetta (ESA), OSIRIS-REx (NASA), and more recently Hera (ESA), where she is the PI of the HyperScout-H instrument. Between 2020 and 2023, she served as the Coordinator of the Exoplanetary Systems and Solar System (SEYSS) research line at SO.

Advanced Fellow
Michael Beasley
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Michael Beasley
INVESTIGADOR/A POSTDOCTORAL
Postdoc
Postdoc
PhD Students
PhD Students
PhD Students
Engineer
Engineer
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Engineer
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Engineer
Engineer
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Antonio Félix Moreno Martín
Engineer