- juliedalgobbo
Name: Thomas Schwetz
Current position: Faculty
Affiliation: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Field of research: Theoretical astroparticle physics, neutrinos, dark matter
What is your career trajectory to date?
PhD at Univ. of Vienna; postdocs at TU Munich, SISSA Trieste, CERN; research position at MPIK Heidelberg; associate professor at Stockholm Univ.; since 2015 professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
What are the most exciting open questions in your research area?
What is dark matter? What is the origin of neutrino mass?
What do you like and dislike about being a scientist?
It is amazing to have a job which is just about finding out how the Universe works. As a theoretical physicists there is lots of freedom in what to work on. This is something I like, but at the same time it comes with high responsability and puts big pressure on you. Challenges change as the career develops and one grows older - but the job is never boring and every week comes with different tasks than the previous one.
In your career so far, at what point were you the most excited, and what were you excited about?
The discovery of neutrino oscillations. Being part of this breakthrough, and being able to contribute with my own research was an amazing experience.
What new skills would you like to learn in the next year?
Time management.
What advances or new results are you excited about or looking forward to?
Cosmology should see finite neutrino masses very soon. If it does not, we need to understand something better in cosmology. Both cases are very exciting. I am most excited about advances we cannot think of right now. Particle physics seems to wait for a breakthrough, but currently nobody knows when and what.
What role do you think a community network like EuCAPT can play in developing theoretical astroparticle physics and cosmology in Europe?
I think community building is important in our field. Science is a global, collaborative effort, even if we tend to work in small groups in theoretical physics. Such a network can help to exchange ideas and make researchers know each other.
What’s your favorite food?
High quality food (which does not necessarily mean expensive). Usually I prefer to have local food, genuine in the place you are. I'll eat Sushi in Japan, Pallea in Valencia, Marillenknödel in Austria (definitely not the other way round). Food has a lot to do with environement: in the Trieste area are places called Osmiza, where you get ham and local wine, which just taste fantastic sitting there in the garden next to the grapes; if I would bring the same ham and wine to my home place in Germany, all the magic is gone.
Have you lived in a different European country than you do now? If so, would you like to tell us something about it, e.g. a fond memory or something you found surprising?
Yes. Living in different countries in my opinion is a great experience - part of our job (should have mentioned it above, to the question what I like about being a scientisit). I lived in 6 different European countries, from the Mediterranean to Skandinavia. Each one has its own culture and habits which I try to learn and absorb when living there. Some I like, some I don't like in each case. But it's always a very enriching experience which I do not want to miss. Changing perspective on certain aspects of life in different cultures helps understand what is real and what is just convention.
How do you like to relax after a hard day of work?
Going for a walk with my dog. Biking home from work. Enjoy our garden.
Do you have any non-physics interests that you would like to share?
Jazz music. Playing saxophone and piano.
If you were not a scientist, what do you think you would be doing?
Jazz musician (maybe - but that's a tough job though...)
What do you hope to see accomplished scientifically in the next 50 years?
Find out what dark matter is. Get a more complete picture of cosmology. (LCDM is beautiful, but it has a number of loose ends which would be great to understand better.) Understand neutrinos better and how they are integrated in the Standard Model.
- juliedalgobbo
Name: Ruth Durrer
Current position: Faculty
Affiliation: Department of Theoretical Physics at Geneva University
Field of research: Cosmology
What is your career trajectory to date?
I studied at Zürich University where I also did my PhD in 1988. Then I went as postdoc to Cambridge IoA and later to Princeton University, physics department. In 1993 I became assistant professor at Zürich University and in 1995 I became full professor in Geneva where I am since then.
What are the most exciting open questions in your research area?
Let me mention two:
The first was to study the CMB acoustic peaks, if fluctuations are due to topological defects. In 1995 (published in PRL, see e-Print: astro-ph/9507035 ) we found, combining numerical simulations and analytical arguments, that there are (nearly) no acoustic peaks in the CMB temperature power spectrum if fluctuations are generated by topological defects. This has later ruled out the generation of fluctuations by topological defects. Their contribution is at best at the few percent level.
The second was the fully relativistic description of what observers measure when they observe the distribution of galaxies. Taking into account on the one hand, that observations are made not on a spatial hypersurface but on our past lightcone and on the other hand, that we do not measure distances but just angles and redshifts and therefore we directly can infer an angular-redshift power spectrum, while P(k,z) always contains model assumptions which convert angles and distances into length scales (published in PRD, see e-Print: 1105.5280).
What do you like and dislike about being a scientist?
I love to do research and like to discuss with young scientist, especially PhD students. I like it that science, especially theoretical physics, is an international endeavour of different cultures, and regions. I also like teaching.
I hate bureaucracy and I especially dislike that it seems to grow every year....
What advances or new results are you excited about or looking forward to?
I am very excited about the discovery of gravitational waves and about its prospects for cosmology. I am looking forward to the data from Euclid and from the Vera Rubin Observatory.
What is the biggest obstacle that is slowing down your research field right now?
Growing bureaucratic responsibilities.
What role do you think a community network like EuCAPT can play in developing theoretical astroparticle physics and cosmology in Europe?
It can bring closer together the European cosmology community. Both, theorists and observers.
How do you like to relax after a hard day of work?
I like hiking and skiing.
What do you hope to see accomplished scientifically in the next 50 years?
Find a better, more sinsible cosmological model, beyond ΛCDM.
- juliedalgobbo
Name: Martin Obergaulinger
Current position: Postdoc
Affiliation: Universitat de València
Field of research: Computational astrophysics, magnetohydrodynamics, core-collapse supernovae
What is your career trajectory to date?
After studying at the Technical University of Munich, I worked on my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching. I stayed there for a postdoc, went for close to a year to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, seven years in València, two at the TU Darmstadt, before returning to València on my current Ramón y Cajal fellowship.
What are the most exciting open questions in your research area?
My quite subjective list includes the mechanisms behind the various classes of explosions of massive stars, their contributions to the synthesis of heavy elements, their emission of gravitational waves, neutrinos, and photons, and the properties of their (compact) remnants as well as turbulence in (magnetised) astrophysical fluids.
What do you like and dislike about being a scientist?
I enjoy working with many colleagues in the field. Most importantly, I love nature. Learning about its many faces is just fascinating. Aspects such as job uncertainty and the competitive nature are not that much of my liking.
Which of your skills are you most proud of, or find most useful?
I (would have) found it useful to, instead of rushing to judgement, listen to what colleagues, simulations, or data have to tell.
In your career so far, at what point were you the most excited, and what were you excited about?
I had a few tiny, let's say Eurequita moments, e.g., simulations showing something surprising (and sometimes not as a result of a bug, but indeed a feature).
What new skills would you like to learn in the next year?
Some of the more recent developments in programming and software engineering as well as data science. Improving my efficiency when it comes to writing from questionnaires like this to papers would not hurt either.
What advances or new results are you excited about or looking forward to?
The next galactic supernova and its gravitational wave and neutrino signals.
What is the biggest obstacle that is slowing down your research field right now?
Like many fields not just of science, we may have to deal with the law of diminishing returns making new steps more and more difficult and costly, economically as well as in terms of complexity.
What role do you think a community network like EuCAPT can play in developing theoretical astroparticle physics and cosmology in Europe?
Connecting people and ideas beyond the confines of state and sub-discipline borders is extraordinarily important for our work.
What’s your favorite food?
All kinds of Mehlspeisen: Kaiserschmarrn, Strudl, Salzburger Nockerl, Dampfnudeln, Germknedl, Zwetschgnknedl, ...
Have you lived in a different European country than you do now? If so, would you like to tell us something about it, e.g. a fond memory or something you found surprising?
I've lived in Bavaria, Israel, and Hessen. In all places I met many great persons within our field and beyond it. I am still utterly fascinated by Jerusalem. I enjoyed a lot living in Eberstadt and hiking in the Odenwald region. And of course I am full of memories of my native Bavaria, such as trainspotting near Treuchtlingen or Mühldorf, cycling along rivers such as Rott, Inn, and Isar, or the extraordinarily beautiful day my brother and I ascended Mount Watzmann.
How do you like to relax after a hard day of work?
Walking, hiking, running, and cycling, reading, listening to music, crossword puzzles.
Do you have any non-physics interests that you would like to share?
Nature in general, history is also a big interest of mine, music, early and not that early, and railways.
If you were not a scientist, what do you think you would be doing?
I hope I would be working at the railways as a locomotive driver or a signaller.
What do you hope to see accomplished scientifically in the next 50 years?
In my own subfield, I would hope for a better understanding of core-collapse supernova and gamma-ray bursts and of the underlying physics from neutrinos to turbulence. In a wider scope, I'd be curious to see how our descriptions of gravity will evolve and what we might learn about complexity in general.
What question would you have liked us to ask you, and what would you have responded?
Perhaps the Werner Herzog option: are you stardust or are you Bavarian? Answer: can't you be both, a very stardusty Bavarian?