Valentin Ivanov joined ESO as a Paranal fellow in 2001, after receiving a PhD at University of Arizona, Tucson. Three years later he became a support astronomer at the La Silla Paranal Observatory and he is working now at the Science Data Products group in Garching. His research interests include the Milky Way galaxy, star clusters, young and low mass stars, brown dwarfs and planets.

Scientific interests:

• Star clusters
• Young/low mass stars
• Brown dwarf
• Planets
  

Personal homepage

Giacomo Beccari joined ESO in 2010. He was an ESO Fellow from 2010 to 2013, staff at Paranal from 2013 to 2015 and staff in Garching since then. Giacomo received his PhD at University of Teramo in 2007 on the topic: Exotica in Globular Clusters. He was also an ESA Fellow from 2008 to 2010. 

Scientific interests:

• Resolved stellar populations in star clusters and local galaxies
• Pre-Main Sequence stars and the mass accretion rate
• PSF photometry in crowded fields
• Impact of stellar dynamics on stellar evolution

Annalisa De Cia is an astronomer in the Observing Programmes Office. Her scientific interests gravitate around cosmic and galaxy chemical evolution. She studies the interstellar and circumgalactic media of galaxies, including cosmic dust, in the Milky Way, local galaxies, and distant galaxies towards quasars or gamma-ray bursts. She is the PI of the HST Large Programme “STIS-ISM: STIS ISM Survey in the Milky Way”. Before returning to ESO in 2023, Annalisa was an Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva, leading the “Interstellar One” research group, funded by a SNFS PRIMA grant. Previously, she was an ESO Fellow in Garching and a postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute for Science. Annalisa received her PhD in 2011 at the University of Iceland. 

Scientific interests:

• Cosmic and galaxy chemical evolution
• Interstellar and circumgalactic medium of galaxies
• Cosmic dust
• Transients
  

Justyn Campbell White joined ESO in 2022 after completing a postdoctoral position at the University of Dundee, UK (2019–2022). Earned a PhD from the University of Kent, UK in 2019, with a focus on Galactic HII Regions. 

Scientific interests:

• Protoplanetary disks
   

Personal Webpage

PhD topic: Tracing biosignatures on planet Earth with high-resolution near-infrared spectropolarimetry

ESO supervisor: Michael Sterzik
Home institute: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU)

Scientific interests:

• Exoplanet atmospheres
• Habitability
• Atmospheric physics
• Earth remote sensing
  

Francisco Nogueras Lara joined ESO in 2023 as an ESO fellow in Garching. He received his PhD at IAA-CSIC (Granada, Spain) in 2019 on the structure and stellar population of the nuclear bulge of the Milky Way. He then moved to MPIA (Heidelberg, Germany) as a postdoc, later becoming a Humboldt Fellow (2021–2023). His key contributions include reshaping the understanding of the star formation history in the nuclear bulge of the Galaxy, showing that it is primarily composed of an ancient stellar population, and identifying a highly energetic star formation event that took place around 1 Gyr ago, likely one of the most energetic events in the history of the Milky Way.

Scientific interests:

• Stellar structure and population of the Milky Way’s centre
• Dense stellar environments
• High angular resolution imaging
• Nuclear stellar discs and clusters
   

Personal homepage

PhD topic: Dissecting the satellite quenching process by process

ESO supervisor: Paola Popesso
Home institute: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU)

Scientific interests:

• Galaxy formation and evolution
• Clusters/groups of galaxies
• Galaxy kinematics and dynamics
• Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations
  

www.natanisidio.com