Postdoctoral Researcher

Postdoctoral Researcher

Paggi

AlessandroPaggi
Education

Alessandro Paggi obtained his M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Rome, Italy) in 2007 with a Master thesis entitled “Gamma-rays from Blazars: Emission Mechanisms from MeV to TeV” under the supervision of Prof. A. Cavaliere. He then started his Ph.D in Astronomy at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, under the supervision of Prof. F. Vagnetti and Prof. A. Cavaliere. In 2010 he spent 6 months at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (Cambridge, MA, USA) as a visiting student, working under the supervision of Dr. D. E. Harris on X-ray spectroscopic observations of blazars. He obtained his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 2010 with a thesis entitled “Flares in Blazars”.

Career

After a six-months appointment at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (Cambridge, MA, USA) in 2011 as a visiting scientist under the supervision of Dr. G. Fabbiano, he worked as a post-doc work at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, first under the supervision of Dr. G. Fabbiano to study the multi-wavelength emission of AGN (2011-2014), and then under the supervision of Dr. D.-W. Kim, studying the extended X-ray emission in galaxies and developing pipelines for spectral and imaging analysis of X-ray data (2014-2016). After another six-months appointment as a visiting scientist in 2017 at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian under the supervision of Dr. D.-W. Kim, he worked at the University of Turin (Torino, Italy) as a post-doc under the supervision of Prof. F. Massaro and at the Astrophysical Observatory of Turin (Pino Torinese, Italy) as an AstroFIt2 fellow under the supervision of Dr. C. Raiteri, to study the large scale environment and the extended emission of radio sources and unidentified gamma-ray sources, and the multi-wavelength variability and polarization of blazars (2017-2023). Since March 2024, he has been a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Dr. Y. Liodakis in the BOOTES project.

Interests

X-ray emission from AGN, galaxies and clusters; multi-wavelength studies of blazars; development of pipelines for automated data reduction and analysis.

Email
Office
245 Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4249
Affiliation
Name
Alessandro
Past Member
Off
Director
Off
Group of
Liodakis
Female
Off

Agis-Gonzalez

BeatrizAgisGonzalez
Education

Beatriz Agís González obtained her BSc in Physics as well as her MSc in Astrophysics and Instrumentation in 2011 both from the University La Laguna (ULL, Spain). She completed his PhD in Astrophysics at "Centro de Astrobiología" (CSIC-INTA) and "Universidad Complutense de Madrid" (Spain) in 2017.

Career

After her PhD, she moved to University of Liège (Belgium) with a IAC-KULeuven Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017-2019) followed by a postdoctoral contract (2019-2021) in the same University. In 2021, she got a "Junta de Andalucía" fellowship (2021-2024) to develop her research at the "Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía" (Spain). In March 2024, she has joined the BOOTES ERC project at IA-FORTH.

Interests

Supermassive black holes, active galactic nuclei, tidal disruption events, quasi-periodic eruptions, multiwavelength photo- and spectro- polarimetry, multiwavelength spectral variability.

Email
Office
245 Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4249
Affiliation
Name
Beatriz
Past Member
Off
Director
Off
Group of
Liodakis
Female
On

Gkogkou

AthanasiaGkogkou
Education

Athanasia Gkogkou obtained her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Athens, completing her studies in 2020 with a Master thesis entitled "Evaluating the impact of radio jets in the evolution of galaxies" under the supervision of Prof. K. Dasyra. She then obtained her Ph.D. in Astrophysics and Cosmology from Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (France) in November 2023 under the supervision of Dr. G. Lagache and Dr. M. Béthermin, with a thesis entitled “Intensity mapping from 2D to 3D: Evaluating the feasibility of interpreting upcoming data".

Career

Since January 2024, she has been a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Dr. J-L. Starck and Prof. P. Tsakalides in TITAN, a collaborative project between the Institutes of Computer Science and Astrophysics of FORTH.

Interests

Galaxy evolution at high-z using 2D (cosmic infrared background) or 3D (line emission) intensity mapping; epoch of reionization (line intensity mapping, thermal/kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect); cosmic microwave background (CMB)

Email
Office
FORTH/ICS/SLP
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-1580
Affiliation
Name
Athanasia
Past Member
Off
Director
Off
Group of
Starck
Female
On

Souropanis

DimitrisSouropanis
Education

Dimitris Souropanis graduated from the Department of Physics of the University of Patras in 2016. He obtained his MSc in Theoretical, Computational Physics & Astrophysics at the same University in 2018, and his PhD in Astronomy at the University of Athens in collaboration with the National Observatory of Athens in 2023 under the supervision of Panos Boumis and Alexandros Chiotellis.

Career

During his doctoral studies, Dimitris spent one year and a half supporting operations on the 2.5m Isaac Newton telescope (INT), one of the many telescopes at the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos (La Palma), while the last 6 months he was one of the trainers of the next-generation of INT support astronomers. Since Fall 2023, he joined the SFERICSS project as a Postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics - FORTH.

Interests

photoionization, binary population synthesis, stellar evolution, massive stars, interacting binaries, supernovae, planetary nebulae, supersoft X-ray sources

Email
Office
233 Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810-394233
Affiliation
Name
Dimitrios
Past Member
Off
Director
Off
Group of
Zapartas
Female
Off

Zapartas

Zapartas
Education

Manos Zapartas was awarded his Degree in Physics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in July 2012. He completed his PhD thesis in December of 2018 at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam (NL) under the supervision of Selma de Mink and Alex de Koter, where he also obtained his MSc Degree with Cum Laude (2014). He is originally from Alexandroupolis, Greece.

Career

In 2019 he moved at the Observatory of Geneva (Switzerland), in the group of Tassos Fragkos, as a postdoc, partially funded from the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship. In 2022, he moved at the National Observatory of Athens in the ERC-funded group of Alceste BonanosASSESS. ince Fall 2023, he joined as a Postdoctoral HFRI (ELIDEK) Fellow at the Institute of Astrophysics, - FORTH, as the PI of the SFERICSS project.

Interests

Stellar evolution, massive stars in binary systems, their late evolutionary stages, core-collapse supernovae, compact remnants, X-ray binaries and merging compact objects. He studies them implementing binary population synthesis, such as POSYDON of which he is a core developer (that is based on grids of detailed MESA binary stellar evolution models), as well as more parametrized ones, such as binary_c.

Email
Office
230β Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810-394265
Affiliation
Name
Manos
Past Member
Off
Director
Off
Group of
-
Female
Off

Missaglia

MISSAGLIA VALENTINA
Education

Valentina Missaglia obtained her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Naples "Federico II" (Italy), completing her studies in 2018 with a Master thesis entitled "WATCAT: a tale of wide-angle tailed radio galaxies" under the supervision of Prof. M. Paolillo. Then, she spent one year at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (Cambridge, MA, USA) as a visiting student, working under the supervision of Dr. R. P. Kraft on Chandra X-ray observations of galaxy clusters. She obtained her Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Turin (Italy) in December 2022 under the supervision of Prof. F. Massaro, with a thesis entitled "A Panchromatic View of Radio-Loud AGN and Their Environment".

Career

Since February 2023, she has been a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Dr. C. Casadio in the SMILE group.

Interests

Radio emission from radio galaxies and interaction of radio plasma with X-ray emitting hot gas; emission from relativistic jets; X-ray emission from Active Galactic Nuclei and feedback.

Email
Office
246 Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4252
Affiliation
Name
Valentina
Past Member
Off
Director
Off
Group of
Casadio
Female
On

Maharana

Maharana
Education

Siddharth Maharana obtained his PhD in astronomy from the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune in India in 2022. Prior to that, he did his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from the Central University in Bilaspur, India in 2015. 

Career

Siddharth joined his first postdoc at the Institute of Astrophysics at FORTH, Crete in October 2022. His main work is centered around the design and development of instruments for astronomical observatories. Since 2017 onwards, his major research efforts have been in building the new set of two upcoming polarimeters called the Wide-Area Linear Optical Polarimeters (WALOP) for the upcoming PASIPHAE survey. The PASIPHAE project is an international collaboration on the mapping of polarized foregrounds for Cosmic Microwave Background B-mode searches through a large-scale opto-polarimetric survey of high Galactic latitudes.

Interests

Astronomical instrumentation, optical polarimetry, Galactic magnetism and physics of the interstellar medium

Email
Office
246, Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4251
Affiliation
Name
Siddharth
Past Member
On
Moved to Institute
SAAO (South Africa) - Postdoctoral Fellow
Director
Off
Position at IA-FORTH
11/2022 - 4/2023, Postdoctoral Researcher
Group of
Tassis
Departure Date
Female
Off

Sánchez-García

Sanchez Garcia
Education

María Sánchez García obtained her BSc in Physics in 2015 as well as her MSc in Astronomy in 2016 at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). In 2022, she obtained her PhD in Astrophysics at the same university with a thesis entitled ‘Star formation relations in luminous infrared galaxies’ carried out at the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, CSIC/INTA) and Observatorio Astronómico Nacional (OAN-IGN) under the supervision of Santiago García-Burillo and Miguel Pereira-Santaella.
 

Career

Since 2022, she has been working at IA-FORTH in the XTREME Project.
 

Interests

Star formation in local galaxies at all spatial scales; Galaxy interactions and mergers; Interstellar medium and environment in luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs).
 

Email
Office
237, Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4257
Affiliation
Name
Maria
Past Member
Off
Director
Off
Group of
Diaz Santos
Female
On

Poetzl

Felix
Education

Felix Pötzl obtained both his BSc and MSc degree from the University of Bonn, Germany, finishing his studies in 2016. He followed that up with a PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn within the International Max-Planck Research School for Astrophysics Bonn/Cologne, which he concluded in 2021.

Career

After completing his PhD, he worked for one year as lecturer at the University College Cork, teaching undergraduate physics and astrophysics courses, while expanding his research on radio-polarimetric studies of jets in active galactic nuclei. Starting in October 2022, he is currently working as postdoctoral researcher at IA-FORTH on the ERC-grant-awarded project of “SMILE: Search for Milli-lenses to discriminate between dark matter models” with Carolina Casadio.

Interests

Active galactic nuclei; extragalactic astrophysics; cosmology; radio and mm-VLBI; polarimetry

Email
Office
246 Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810-394251
Affiliation
Name
Felix
Past Member
Off
Director
Off
Group of
Casadio
Female
Off