Three new Cluster Fellows

The Excellence Cluster Universe welcomes three new research fellows: Dr. Aleksi Halkola, Dr. Diego Guadagnoli and Dr. Lise Christensen.

Aleksi Halkola was the first to arrive, starting his fellowship on 1 August 2009. Aleksi, who was born in Finland and educated both in Finland and Great Britain, obtained his PhD in Astronomy from the Universitätssternwarte München. His main research interest focuses on dark matter and galaxy clusters and their study with gravitational lensing. He is now part of research area E which working on the decoding of the dark components of the Universe.

 
Already familiar with the Cluster is Diego Guadagnoli, who will join the Universe Cluster on 1 September 2009. For the last four years Diego worked as a postdoc at the Institute T31 for Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics at TUM. He has already been a member of research area C which focuses on the origin of particle masses and the reason for their hierarchy. His current research interests are broadly concerned with phenomenology of physics beyond the Standard Model, and in particular supersymmetry, also in connection with Grand Unified Theories.

 
Lise Christensen will embark upon her new position on 1 October 2009. Before joining the Cluster, Lise worked as a postdoc at ESO for four years including three years as VIMOS instrument fellow in Chile. Lise’s research in the past few years has been focused on the use of integral field spectroscopy, which combines imaging and spectroscopy, allowing to obtain spectra at each position in a contiguous field. Her research projects will complement those currently being carried out in the Cluster’s research areas F and G centering on black holes and the question how the Universe was enriched with heavy elements.