- Nikolina Šarčević
Name: Juan García-Bellido
Current position: Professor
Affiliation: Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid
What is your field of research?
Cosmology at large, both early and late universe, both theoretical and observational.
What is your career trajectory to date?
PhD UAM Madrid 1992, PDRA Stanford 1993-95, CERN TH Fellow 1996-98, Imperial College URF RS 1998-99, Professor UAM 1999, Visiting Prof UniGE 2009-10.
What are the most exciting open questions in your research area?
Nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
What do you like about being a scientist?
I love the intellectual challenges of research on unexplored territory.
Which of your skills are you most proud of, or find most useful?
A broad cosmic vision of the Universe.
In your career so far, at what point were you the most excited, and what were you excited about?
Nowadays on the existence of primordial black holes as the main component of dark matter.
What new skills would you like to learn in the next year?
First hand knowledge inside Virgo of the subsolar mass range of black holes.
What advances or new results are you excited about or looking forward to?
Increased sensitivity of LVK and LSST to detect sub solar mass black holes.
What is the biggest obstacle that is slowing down your research field right now?
Lack of man/woman power.
What role do you think a community network like EuCAPT can play in developing theoretical astroparticle physics and cosmology in Europe?
A fundamental one, in coordinating efforts towards Einstein Telescope.
What’s your favorite food?
Boletus Edulis.
How do you like to relax after a hard day of work?
By oil painting.
If you were not a scientist, what do you think you would be doing?
Painter.
What do you hope to see accomplished scientifically in the next 50 years?
Detection of the B-mode polarization from inflation and the nature of dark energy.
Do you have a family and how do you reconcile both research and family?
By carefully organizing my time, giving both their share.
- elenagianolio
Name: Irene Tamborra
Current position: Professor
Affiliation: Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
What's your field of research?
Theoretical particle astrophysics. I like to explore the role of weakly interacting particles in astrophysics and cosmology. Within a multi-messenger framework, I also work to unveil what can be learnt by adopting neutrinos as probes of extreme astrophysical sites.
What is your career trajectory to date?
I completed my undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Bari (Italy) in 2011. I then spent two years at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich (Germany) as Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, before joining the GRAPPA Institute, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) for another couple of years. In 2016, I was hired as Knud Højgaard Assistant Professor at Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen (Denmark) and was promoted Associate Professor in 2017. I am Full Professor since the beginning of 2021.
What are the most exciting open questions in your research area?
The advent of multi-messenger astronomy is offering unprecedented opportunities to learn about the unknowns of the universe, this is extremely exciting. My favorite messenger is the neutrino, its physics in the context of astrophysical sources is still poorly understood. With the upcoming large-scale neutrino telescopes, the growing multi-messenger datasets, and progress on the theoretical front, I hope we will be able to address these questions.
In your career so far, at what point were you the most excited, and what were you excited about?
I really enjoy the excitement that comes when I finally man a riddle that has kept me busy for long time and everything falls into place, I am lucky enough to have experienced this feeling in many instances. An extreme example is when I discovered the LESA instability; it was such a counter-intuitive and unexpected phenomenon that I thought I had a bug in my code, but I could not find it and I worked on it extremely hard and for a very long time. It has been very rewarding to confirm and understand my findings. In addition to scientific discoveries, I am really thrilled to see students grow into junior scientists. What is the biggest obstacle that is slowing down your research field right now? Neutrinos require a lot of patience. As for the high-energy tail of the neutrino spectrum, we do not understand which are the sources of the neutrino events observed from the IceCube Observatory; we should probably gather a larger number of events to gain better insights on the origin of these neutrinos and the conditions under which neutrinos are produced. In addition, we have not detected ultra high energy neutrinos yet. At lower energies, neutrinos play a crucial role in the physics of some of the most extreme events in the universe, such as core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers, as well as in the early universe; however, we do not really grasp neutrino mixing at such high densities--this is a very hard problem, but progress is being made. These issues also have implications on the possibility of discovering physics beyond the Standard Model through astrophysical sources and on our understanding of the source physics.
If you were not a scientist, what do you think you would be doing? I would be an artist or a professional gymnast. What do you hope to see accomplished scientifically in the next 50 years?
I am eagerly awaiting for the next nearby supernova explosion, of course!
- Andrew Taylor
Dear All,
Continuing our regular EuCAPT newsletters, this is our April 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 workshop on Astroneutrino Theory (18-30 April 2021):
EuCAPT white paper: https://www.eucapt.org/white-paper (preparatory activities for this presently taking place in the EuCAPT mattermost channel -see below details to connect to this channel)
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:
(3-7 May 2021, Workshop on Gravitational Waves)
https://indico.cern.ch/event/853904/ (5-7 May, EuCAPT Symposium, CERN)
https://agenda.astro.ru.nl/event/18/overview (17-21 May, Global Cosmic Ray Workshop)
https://icrc2021.desy.de/ (12-23 July, ICRC, Germany)
https://www.eps-hep2021.eu/ (26-30 July 2021, EPS-HEP Conference)
https://congresos.adeituv.es/TAUP2021 (30 Aug- 3 Sep 2021, TAUP2021)
Upcoming Seminars Calendar:
A list of virtual meetings are provided on our calendar:
2021 Summer Schools:
ISAPP 2021, Gamma Rays + Dark Matter, Madrid (20-29 Jun):
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):
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)