- Nikolina Šarčević
Name: Daniela Doneva
Current position: Postdoc (Emmy Noether group leader)
Affiliation: University of Tübingen
Field of research: Theoretical astrophysics, Gravitational physics
What is your career trajectory to date? I obtained my Ph.D. at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria under the supervision of Stoytcho Yazadjiev. I moved afterwards to a postdoc position at Tuebingen, where I was awarder with a Humboldt fellowship, followed by a Margarete von Wrangell habilitation fellowship combined with an Eliteprogramm grant of the Baden-Württemberg Foundation. I am currently an Emmy Noether fellow at the University of Tuebingen and member of the Elisabeth-Schiemann-Kolleg of the Max Planck Society.
What are the most exciting open questions in your research area? Perhaps the most exciting open questions in my research area are the following. The behaviour of matter at the extreme densities observed in the neutron star cores is not yet well understood. In addition, a very important fundamental question is whether Einstein's theory of gravity is valid in the regime of strong gravitational field.
What do you like and dislike about being a scientist? The best thing about doing science is that you managed to turn your child's dream into a job, always develop yourself, work on the limit of your mental abilities, and push your borders every day. Everything comes with a price, though, and I at least I find it very difficult to separate work from the rest of my life and to have a real time off. In addition, even though mobility is a good thing in terms of scientific career, it is also a huge challenge when having a family.
Which of your skills are you most proud of, or find most useful? My most valuable skill is to be persistent for a long period of time despite the (sometime huge) difficulties. I am also able to divide a new problem into building blocks with increasing complexity, that are solved individually much easier.
In your career so far, at what point were you the most excited, and what were you excited about? I can not define a certain point when I was most excited. In general I always get excited when I attack a very difficult and completely new problem on the border of my capabilities and more importantly - when I solve it.
What new skills would you like to learn in the next year? On the science front, I would like to advance further in the nonlinear simulations of compact objects dynamics since this is among the ultimate tools to confront fundamental physics predictions to observations. As a junior group leader I will be happy to continue developing my supervision and group management skills.
What advances or new results are you excited about or looking forward to? I am very excited to see how the future gravitational wave observations will be able to constrain fundamental physics. The accuracy of these observations is rapidly increasing and it is a matter of years until we either make a breakthrough in fundamental physics or establish the existing standard models with a very good accuracy.
What is the biggest obstacle that is slowing down your research field right now? The biggest "obstacle" is on one side the complexity of the problems that is much higher compared to general relativity, and on the other - even though the gravitational wave and electromagnetic observations are advancing rapidly, they are still not at the level of testing many of the aspect of alternative theories of gravity.
What role do you think a community network like EuCAPT can play in developing theoretical astroparticle physics and cosmology in Europe? Networking is extremely important in our field of research. EuCAPT offers one of the relatively few opportunities in this direction on a European level.
What’s your favorite food? All kinds of fruits and bread
How do you like to relax after a hard day of work? Two kids "screaming" around me and seeking my attention - even though it is exhausting, they manage to force me to completely forget work for a while.
Do you have any non-physics interests that you would like to share? I love travelling.
If you were not a scientist, what do you think you would be doing? Software engineer.
What do you hope to see accomplished scientifically in the next 50 years? I hope to see more aspects of fundamental physics being developed and tested observationally.
- Andrew Taylor
Dear All,
Continuing our regular EuCAPT newsletters, this is our June issue.
The newsletter aim here is to keep you informed of recent/upcoming
theoretical astroparticle physics related developments, with focus on Europe.
General EuCAPT News:
EuCAPT white paper: https://www.eucapt.org/white-paper (preparatory activities for this presently taking place in EuCAPT mattermost channel + related channels mentioned there) EuCAPT Astroneutrino Theory Workshop 2021 (20 Sep- 1 Oct) Recent Press Releases: The first multi-day and and multi-TeV detection of a GRB at very high energies: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6546/1081 ....and a short animation describing GRB physics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdF4gknH9YM&t=34s
Upcoming Events/Conferences/Workshops:
The EuCAPT webpage provides an up-to-date list of upcoming astroparticle
physics events: https://www.eucapt.org/events
Please note in particular the upcoming meetings:
https://www.cosmologyfromhome.com/registration (5-16 July)
https://icrc2021.desy.de/ (15-31 July, ICRC, Germany)
https://www.eps-hep2021.eu/ (26-30 July 2021, EPS-HEP Conference)
https://congresos.adeituv.es/TAUP2021 (26 Aug- 3 Sep 2021, TAUP2021)
Upcoming Seminars Calendar:
A list of virtual meetings are provided on our calendar:
2021 Summer Schools:
NBIA International PhD Summer School on Neutrinos, Copenhagen (5-9 Jul):
ISAPP 2021, Neutrino Physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology, Valencia (22-30 Jul):
Les Houches Summer School on Dark Matter (26 Jul- 20 Aug):
International Neutrino Summer School, CERN (2-13 Aug):
Training Possibilties
If you wish to post information about training opportunities for students or young
researchers (summer and winter schools, PhD or postdoctoral openings, etc), please
send us an email with the relevant information to the address eucapt.info@gmail.com
(with “training” in the subject).
Discussion Forum
We invite you to join our EuCAPT discussion forum on mattermost:
This has been set up to facilitate open discussion within our EuCAPT community.
Job Opportunities:
Our mattermost channel provides a list of job advertisements:
To facilitate information flow around our community, please feel to contact us with any information that you feel maybe suitable for circulation in future newsletters (eucapt.info@gmail.com). In particular, we encourage the community to indicate to us upcoming conferences and events which they would like us to advertise.
All the best,
Andrew (on behalf of the EuCAPT SC)
- Nikolina Šarčević
Name: Alba Kalaja
Current position: PhD
Affiliation: VSI, University of Groningen
Field of research: Theoretical and observational Cosmology
What is your career trajectory to date? I completed my bachelor and master degrees at the University of Padova (2013-2018). I spent some months at the ICCUB of the University of Barcelona as an Erasmus student and later as a visiting student. Currently, I am a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen. I work with Daan Meerburg on CMB physics, primordial non-Gaussianity and lensing reconstruction.
What are the most exciting open questions in your research area? One of the most intriguing questions for me is: what happened in the first moments of our universe? Finding ways to explore the smallest scales is very exciting.
What do you like and dislike about being a scientist? There are so many things that I love about my job: the problem-solving process, so frustrating at times but highly rewarding when you see the results; challenging myself with new problems; working with amazingly smart and creative people, who inspire me and keep my motivation high. Obviously, travelling is another perk and I would like to start doing it again once the COVID-19 pandemic is under control. I dislike the lack of job security, the idea that I’ll have to choose between having a career and being close to loved ones. Also, I don’t like the toxic environment that still persists in some institutes and universities.
Which of your skills are you most proud of, or find most useful? I like to think that I’m well organized and tidy in code-writing. I’m also a very empathic person... this is a skill, right?!
In your career so far, at what point were you the most excited, and what were you excited about? I remember the excitement for the first detection of gravitational waves and the latest Planck results. The picture of the black holes was also super cool. On another note, I was happy to see how scientific effort could produce viable COVID-19 vaccines in such a short amount of time!
What new skills would you like to learn in the next year? I would like to improve my coding skills, maybe throw myself into machine learning.
What advances or new results are you excited about or looking forward to?
There are so many upcoming experiments to be excited about! I’m looking forward to CMB missions like SO and CMB-S4, but also Euclid, SPHEREx and LISA. I believe they will give us a huge kick into solving fundamental questions in Cosmology.
What role do you think a community network like EuCAPT can play in developing theoretical astroparticle physics and cosmology in Europe? Mainly connecting people, especially young researchers who do not have the chance (or resources) to make meaningful connections.
What’s your favorite food? This is a tough one so I’ll go for food that gives me good feelings: my grandma’s petulla (Albanian fried dough), pizza and fries.
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 was born in Albania, grew up in Italy and lived in Spain. Every country has given me meaningful memories! Definitely, the international vibe and the incredibly good food in Barcelona made me feel welcome.
How do you like to relax after a hard day of work? Usually watching a series, reading a book, cooking, taking care of my plants, sometimes drawing and writing. When the weather allows it, I like to go out on picnics to explore the Dutch countryside.
Do you have any non-physics interests that you would like to share? I love reading and jigsaw puzzles. I always enjoy a good fantasy or sci-fi book, but I read any genre. Lately, I’ve become more interested in gender issues and sexism in languages (especially Italian!).
If you were not a scientist, what do you think you would be doing? I’ve always had an interest in linguistics, philology and ancient history, so I would probably be doing something in those fields… research, again?!
What do you hope to see accomplished scientifically in the next 50 years? In cosmology, I hope we will know more about the early universe and the nature of dark matter/energy. Generally, I would like to see more concrete solutions to climate change, and more sustainable and ethical alternatives to meat and fish.