Astrophysicist
Postdocs
Alejandra Rojas (PhD Universidad Andres Bello/ESO 2019)
Alejandra is a Fondecyt fellow, working with our group since April 2021. Her fellowship will be carried out between Universidad de Antofagasta (in the group of Mederic Boquien) and UDP. Alejandra has been studying the properties of outflows in BASS AGN during her PhD, and she will continue working on outflows and on the multi-wavelength properties of BASS AGN in the next years.
Matthew Temple (PhD Cambridge Univ., 2020)
Matthew is an ALMA-Conicyt fellow, and joined my group in late 2020. During his PhD he has been working on AGN outflows in the optical, as well as on the properties of hot dust. He is a member of the LSST and SDSSV collaborations, and he is currently working on outflows in BAL quasars and nearby AGN, with the idea of understanding the impact AGN have on their host galaxies.
Alessia Tortosa (PhD Roma Tre, 2017)
Alessia is a Fondecyt fellow, and has been working at UDP with me since the summer of 2019. After her PhD she spent two years working on the X-ray polarimetric mission IXPE. Her main interest are the accretion properties of AGN, with particular focus on the X-ray band and on the hot corona that produces the X-ray emission. She is currently working on studying X-ray variability in the BASS survey, as well as on understanding the broad-band X-ray properties of nearby Super-Eddington AGN.
PhD students
Melissa Bierschenk
Melissa is a PhD student at George Mason University, and she joined my group in mid-2020. She is currently working on the mid-IR spectroscopical properties of AGN from the BASS survey, with the goal of understanding the relation between the properties of AGN and those of the dust and gas that surrounds them.
Giorgos Dimopoulos
Giorgos was awarded a 4-years ANID fellowship to work in my group at UDP, starting in March 2021. He obtained his master at the National Observatory of Athens (Greece), where he worked on the properties of the X-ray emitting plasma using NuSTAR observations. His work at UDP will focus on the analysis of broad-band X-ray spectra of nearby AGN.
Kriti Kamal Gupta
Kriti is a Phd student at UDP since March 2019. She has been working on the properties of scattered X-ray radiation in obscured AGN from the BASS survey, and recently submitted her first paper. She is currently working on the spectral energy distribution of unobscured BASS AGN, with the goal of understanding the relation between the accretion properties of supermassive black holes and those of the X-ray corona.
Ruancun Li
Ruancun is a PhD student at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, and I have been co-supervising him since 2018. He is currently working on the multi-wavelength properties of the enigmatic AGN 1ES1927+654, the first accreting supermassive black hole in which the X-ray source disappeared. With his work he is studying the evolution of the spectral energy distribution of this object after the outburst.
Jeffrey McKaig
Jeffrey is a PhD student at George Mason University, and he joined my group in mid-2020. He has been using RefleX ray-tracing simulations to model the effect of extended gas and dust on the X-ray spectra of AGN. These simulations will be extremely useful with the advent of the new generation of high-resolution X-ray spectrometers on board XRISM and Athena.
Previous members
Taiki Kawamuro [2020-2022]
(PhD Kyoto University, 2017)
Taiki was a Fondecyt fellow, and worked with me from March 2020 to January 2022. His expertise is in X-ray and submm studies of AGN; he is a member of the MAXI team and has also been working on tidal disruption events. During his postdoc his work was focussed on compare X-ray and high-resolution submm observations of nearby AGN to understand the interplay between AGN and their host galaxies. Taiki was then awarded a Special Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at RIKEN, in Japan.
Ryan Pfeifle [2018-2022]
I was the co-supervisor of Ryan's PhD thesis, which he obtained at George Mason University in 2022. Ryan's work was focussed on obscured AGN in mergers, particularly from an X-ray perspective. He also worked on constraining, using the BASS survey, different indicators of AGN obscuration by combining X-ray and IR photometry. After his PhD Ryan was awarded a NASA postdoctoral fellowship, and he moved to NASA Goddard.
Carolina Andonie [2016-2019]
Carolina started working with me in 2016, during her bachelor at PUC, first for several summer projects, and eventually for her bachelor thesis. During her master we continued working together on a project aimed at applying a physical X-ray model for the AGN in the Circinus galaxy, created from high-resolution IR and optical observations. The paper on this work has been submitted to MNRAS in July 2021. Since November 2020 Carolina is a PhD student at Durham University.
