Roberto Angioni did his BSc studies in Physics at the University of Cagliari (Italy). His BSc thesis work involved JVLA radio observations of water masers in the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 766, in collaboration with Dr. Andrea Tarchi at the Cagliari Astronomical Observatory (OAC). He then obtained his MSc in Astrophysics and Cosmology at the University of Bologna (Italy), with a thesis centered on the study of the high-energy (Fermi-LAT) properties of TeV detected radio galaxies, and prospects for observation of more TeV Misaligned AGN with the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). This work was supervised mainly by Dr. Paola Grandi at the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Cosmic Physics (IASF) in Bologna. Currently Roberto is working as an IMPRS PhD student at the MPIfR in the group of Prof. Anton Zensus, under the supervision of Dr. Eduardo Ros, and in collaboration with Dr. Mathias Kadler from Wurzburg University. The project is centered on multi-band studies of the Compact Symmetric Objects (CSOs) included in the TANAMI sample of radio-loud AGN, starting with a detailed VLBI radio analysis (MPIfR), then performing a study of the gamma-ray properties of these sources using the new Pass8 Fermi-LAT data analysis software (Wurzburg), and finally an X-ray study in order to produce a broadband Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) for these sources (Bamberg observatory). CSOs are expected to be gamma-ray emitters, but their detection is still lacking. The goal of the project is to attempt a detection with the new Pass8 software, or obtain improved upper limits in order to better constrain the physical emission models in these objects, together with information from high-resolution VLBI imaging and the broadband SED.

Country of origin: Italy
Starting at the IMPRS: 09/2015
Title of thesis: "Multi-band observations of southern galaxies"
Thesis advisor: Dr. Eduardo Ros, Prof. Dr. M. Kadler
Expertise: Fermi-LAT science tools, Xspec, AIPS, IDL, LaTeX, SuperMongo, Topcat
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.05, e-mail: angioni@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Anne-Kathrin Baczko studied Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen Nürnberg, Germany. She worked on her Bachelor and Master thesis under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jörn Wilms, and in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Mathias Kadler from the University of Würzburg, Germany, and Prof. Dr. Eduardo Ros from the MPIfR in Bonn.
In her Bachelor thesis she studied global mm-VLBI observations of the Active Galactic Nucleus in NGC1052 at 86GHz, focusing on the calibration of the visibility data.
Her MSc work was based on a multi-epoch and multi-frequency study of the same source with observations over 4 years. The obtained parameters of the morphology and dynamic of the twin-jet system of NGC1052 suggest an observable asymmetry.
For her PhD she will work in the group of Prof. Dr. Anton Zensus under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Eduardo Ros, and in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Mathias Kadler. The project is based on high-resolution VLBI studies of extragalactic jets.

Country of origin: Germany
Starting at the IMPRS: 03/2016
Title of thesis: "High-resolution VLBI studies of extragalactic jets"
Thesis advisor: Prof. Dr. Eduardo Ros
Expertise: millimeter data reduction and analysis, Software: AIPS, Difmap, CASA, SCHED, LaTeX; Programming: S-lang, html; Basics in: C/C++, bash/tcsh, php
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.05, e-mail: baczko@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de more

Vishnu Balakrishnan did his undergraduate studies in Physics at Christ University in India. In the spring of 2014, he worked with Prof. Dr. Stalin C.S. of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. There he worked on Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies using data from the Sloan Digital Sky survey. He joined the University of Bonn in October 2014 to do his masters in Astrophysics. He did his master thesis on "Multi-Frequency Radio Observations of the COSMOS field" under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Frank Bertoldi and Dr. Hans Klöckner. The master thesis focused on working with Metre-wavelength observations of the COSMOS field using the Giant Metrewave Radio telescope (GMRT). He worked on calibration, imaging methods using AIPS, ParselTongue. Additionally, he also developed tools to calculate spectral age of extended radio sources.

Vishnu is currently part of the Fundamental Physics in Radio Astronomy group led by Prof. Dr. Michael Kramer. He is working on developing new techniques based on neural nets for pulsar searching in the HTRU-South Survey.

Country of origin: India
Starting at the IMPRS: 08/2017
Title of the thesis: "Searching for Radio Pulsars using Parkes telescope."
Thesis advisor: Dr. David Champion, Prof. Dr. Michael Kramer
Address:  MPIFR, Room 0.06
Expertise: Python, C++, bash/tcsh, AIPS, SIGPROC

Mélisse Bonfand did her undergraduate studies at the University Joseph Fourier of Grenoble in France. She obtained her Master degree in Astrophysics after a five-month internship at the "Institut de Planètologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble". Her work was dedicated to the study of the Sulfur depletion in the dense interstellar medium using millimeter observations performed at the IRAM 30m telescope, compared to the numerical predictions of chemical models.
In October 2015 she joined the Millimeter/Submillimeter Astronomy group at the Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie. She investigates the complex organic chemistry in the interstellar medium using a spectral line survey conducted with ALMA toward Sagittarius B2. Her aim is to derive the abundance and location of the detected molecules in order to test the numerical predictions of chemical models and to set constraints on the kinematic structure and the evolutionnary stage of the observed sources.


Country of origin : France
Starting at the IMPRS : 01/2016
Title of thesis : Complex organic chemistry in the interstellar medium
Thesis advisors : Dr. Arnaud Belloche and Prof.Dr. Karl Menten
Expertise : Observing experience at the IRAM 30m telescope, millimeter data reduction and analysis, GILDAS (CLASS & GreG), LaTeX. Basics : Fortran, C/C++, Python, Gnuplot.
Address : MPIfR, Room 2.36, Phone: 0228 525464, email: bonfand@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

more

Weiwei Chen did his master studies  in Astrophysics at Guangzhou university, China. During his master period, he worked on the test of the pulsar emission beam model. In his master thesis, he developed a Bayesian inference program implemented using MCMC to fit the polarization position angle of pulsar with RVM and successfully obtained the inclination angles and impact angles from 123 pulsars. A test of the emission beam of pulsar have been carried out using this results.
In September 2016, he joined the Fundamental Physics in Radio Astronomy Group for his PhD studies working on the beamformer of the MeerKAT and FRBs searching.

Country of origin: China
Starting at the IMPRS : 09/2016
Thesis advisor/supervisor: Dr. Ramesh Karuppusamy/Prof. Dr. Michael Kramer
Address: MPIfR, Room 0.03
Expertise: C, Python, Bayesian inference
E-mail: wchen [at] mpifr-bonn [dot] mpg [dot] de

Céline Chidiac finished her undergraduate studies in physics at the Lebanese University -  Faculty of Science II -  Fanar (Lebanon). She joined the University of Bonn, for her master studies in Astrophysics.
During her first year as a master student(May - August 2014), she did an internship in the Millimeter/Submillimeter Astronomy group at the Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie and did imaging and model fitting of radio data. In October 2014, she joined the VLBI group for an internship in time series analysis, before starting her master thesis. On March 2015, she started her master thesis in VLBI group at the Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie. Her master thesis dealt with the broadband variability in the FSRQ 3C 273. Her work helped understand the emission mechanisms causing the gamma-ray and x-ray emission and constrained the location and size of the emission regions.On March 2016, she will join the VLBI group to study the chemistry and environment of M 82 and IC 342. The mapping survey will help understand the reason behind the high star formation rate in those galaxies, despite the fact that their innermost few pcs are very similar to that of the Milky way.

Country of origin : Lebanon
Starting at the IMPRS : 03/2016
Title of the thesis : Chemistry and environment of M 82 and IC 342
Thesis advisors : Dr. Rainer Mauersberger and Prof.Dr. J. Anton Zensus
Expertise : radio imaging and model fitting, DifMap, LaTeX/Lyx, Python, Gnuplot.
Address : MPIfR, Room 3.20, Phone: 387, email: cchidiac@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de more

Eric Faustino did his undergraduate work at the University of Puebla, Mexico. In his bachelor thesis he carried out a multiwavelength study of the blazar 3C 273. He did his Master in Sciences in Astrophysics at the National Institute for Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE, Mexico). His thesis project was focused on two open issues concerning  the AGN phenomenon: the nature of the Mega-parsec scale radio galaxies and the co-evolution of the host galaxy and the central engine in radio-loud AGNs. In this work, he found suggestive evidence of ionized clouds moving in a helicoidal way along the jet on kpc scales in PKS 0521−36; which suggests a strong interplay between the jet and the host galaxy through the so-called radio-mode AGN feedback. He continues his PhD studies at the AlfA within Professor Frank Bertoldi’s group with Dr Alexander Karim as his adviser.  The topic of his PhD project is related with a census of active galactic nuclei across cosmic time.


Country of origin: Mexico
Starting at the IMPRS: 09/2015
Title of the thesis: “A census of active galactic nuclei across cosmic time"
Thesis advisor: Dr. Alexander Karim
Expertise : Python, IRAF,  LaTex
Address: AlfA, Room 1.026
Email: ericja@astro.uni-bonn.de more

Enrico Garaldi has obtained his Bachelor degree in Physics at the University of Modena, Italy and his Master degree in Theoretical Physics at the University of Bologna, Italy. Beginning with his Master thesis, he started working on cosmological numerical simulations. In particular, his Master thesis was focused on zoom-in Dark Matter simulations of an extention of the LCDM concordance model and its effects on the matter density profile of halos. He joined the group of "Large Scale Structures" headed by prof. Cristiano Porciani at the Argelander Institut fuer Astronomie at the beginning of 2015. Beside the follow-up of his Master thesis work, he started working on numerical hydrodynamical radiative-transfer simulations of the Epoch of Reionization, aiming to develop and use a suite of numerical tools in order to test reionization models and produce mock observations, as well as hydrodynamical simulations of galaxies and galactic halos, in order to understand the intricate interplay between Dark Matter and baryons.

Country of origin: Italy
Starting at the IMPRS: 02/2016
Title of Thesis: Hydrodynamical numerical simulations of galaxy formation
Thesis Advisor: C. Porciani
Expertise:
Address:Argelander-Institut für Astronomie
Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn, Germany,
Room: 1.024, Phone: +49 (0) 228 73 3433, email:
egaraldi[at]uni-bonn[dot]de

Jens Erler did his undergraduate work at the University of Bonn, Germany where he specialized in extragalactic astronomy with a focus on galaxy clusters and cosmology. In his Master thesis  “Extraction of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich-Effect maps from Planck data and evidence for a shock associated with the Coma radio relic”, he presented an ILC based approach to extract maps of the Comptonization parameter from public Planck all-sky maps. With these maps he probed the connection between large scale shocks in the intra cluster medium of galaxy clusters and radio relics.

Jens Erler is currently enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Bonn and is continuing his work on galaxy clusters with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. He is focusing on the cross correlation of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect with other observables as well as using SZE and X-ray observations of galaxy clusters to constrain cosmological models.

Country of origin: Germany
Starting at the IMPRS: 04/2015
Title of thesis: "Astrophysics and cosmology with galaxy clusters from Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and X-ray observations"
Thesis supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Bertoldi
Thesis advisor: Dr. Kaustuv Basu
Expertise: Observing experience at the IRAM 30m telescope, IDL, python, HEALPix
Address: AIfA, Room 1.026, Phone +49 228 733521, email: jens_at_astro.uni-bonn.de

Kevin Corneilus Harrington earned two B.Sc. degrees, in Astronomy and Psychology-neuroscience, as a member of the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, U.S.A. He conducted research with the Large Millimeter Telescope in Mexico and Green Bank Telescope in West, Virginia, for his Honors thesis titled “Observations Of The Most Luminous, High-Redshift Star-bursting Galaxies Discovered Using Planck”. He also worked on 2 National Science Foundation funded summer research projects. In the Summer 2014 at Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico: “Multiple Methanol Transitions Detected in W51-E2 from the Arecibo Galactic Chemistry Survey (AGCS)” and for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Summer 2015 internship: “GBT Search for HI Clouds Tracing the Nuclear Wind of the Milky Way”.

In July 2016 Kevin joined Prof. Dr. Frank Bertoldi’s millimeter/submillimeter Astronomy group at the University of Bonn. For his PhD, he will also work under the supervision of Alex Karim in “Understanding Galaxy Assembly; SFB: Conditions and Impact of Star Formation project A1” through observations of star formation in the most active and earliest forming galactic systems in order to contextualize the cycle of star formation throughout cosmic time.
Country of origin: United States
Starting at the IMPRS: 07/2016
Title of Thesis: Observations of Actively Evolving Galaxies in the Early Universe
Thesis Supervisor/Advisor: F.Bertoldi / A. Karim
Expertise: Observing with 50-m Large Millimeter Telescope, 100-m Green Bank Telescope, IDL, Python
Address: Argelander-Institut für Astronomie
Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn, Germany,
Room: 1.026, Phone: +49 (0) 228 73 3521, email:
kharring[at]astro[dot]uni-bonn[dot]de

Guðjón Henning Hilmarsson got his Master's degree in astrophysics at the University of Iceland, along with half a year of exchange studies spent at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His thesis subject was on the enigmatic Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), a relatively new field of study in radio astronomy on millisecond radio transients of extragalactic origin. Henning started his PhD at the MPIfR in July 2016, where he will be looking for FRBs with the new phased array feed (PAF) which will be mounted on the Effelsberg 100 m radio telescope in late 2016.

Country of origin: Iceland
Starting at the IMPRS: 07/2016
Title of thesis: Fast Radio Bursts with PAF
Thesis advisor: Dr. Laura Spitler, Prof. Dr. Michael Kramer
Address: MPIfR, Room E0.10
e-mail: henning (at) mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Elaheh Hosseini did her undergraduate studies in physics at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran, and her master studies in Theoretical and Astrophysics at Shiraz University in Shiraz, Iran, with a focus on Gravity and Cosmology. Her master project was on studying "Dynamics of Spacetime as an Emergent Phenomenon" under the supervision of Prof. Dr. M.H. Dehghani and Dr. A. Sheykhi. Elaheh joined Prof. Dr. Andreas Eckart's group at the University of Cologne in April 2016 to study the Galaxy Center and Extragalactic Nuclei (AGN/starburst) in Mid-Infrared wavelengths.



Country of origin: Iran
Starting at the IMPRS: 04/2016
Title of the thesis: "Physics of Galactic Center"
Thesis advisor: Prof. Dr. Andreas Eckart
Expertise: Fortran,GR Tensor on maple,Latex, Winedit, Scientific work place
Address: 1st Instit. of Physics, Uni Cologne, Room 210, +49 221 470 6157
Research Gate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/S_Elaheh_Hosseini

Fateme Kamali did her undergraduate studies in physics, in Shiraz University, Iran. She joined the Erasmus Mundus master course in astronomy and astrophysics (AstroMundus) in 2012 and completed her master thesis in the Universities of Göttingen (Germany) and Belgrade (Serbia). In her master thesis she worked on optical/UV spectroscopy of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs). She joined the millimeter/submillimeter Astronomy group in MPIfR in October 2014, to study the accretion disk-jet paradigm in the central part of AGNs which the water megamaser disk has already been observed.


Country of origin: Iran
Starting at the IMPRS: 10/2014
Title of the thesis: Continuum Study of Water-Disk-Megamaser Galaxies
Thesis advisor: Dr. Christian Henkel, Dr. Andreas Brunthaler
Expertise: Radio Interferometery data, CASA, Python, Fortran
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.39, Phone 0228525154, email: fkamali@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Jae-Young Kim did his undergraduate and master's studies at the Physics and Astronomy department of Seoul National University (SNU), Korea. In his MSc thesis work his previous supervisor Sascha Trippe and he investigated milli-arcsecond multi-frequency and linear polarization properties of parsec-scale bright radio jets in several active galaxies. He mainly investigated brightness temperature distributions, spectral indices of the jet nuclear regions, and evolution of the linear polarizations driven by turbulence and shocks. After joining VLBI group of MPIfR, he currently works on analyses of dual polarization data taken from the Global mm-VLBI Array in order to investigate structural and polarimetric properties of the innermost regions of AGN jets on micro-arcsecond scales.

Country of origin: Republic of Korea
Starting at the IMPRS: 08/2015
Title of the thesis: "Millimetre-VLBI studies of Active Galactic Nuclei"
Thesis advisor: Dr. Thomas Krichbaum
Expertise : Python, IDL, C, AIPS, Difmap, SCHED, IRAF, SExtractor, MESA, LaTex, LabVIEW, shell scripting (basics in html)
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.05, email: jykim (at) mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Maja Kierdorf did her undergraduate work at the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany. Her work at University of Bonn included cosmic magnetism and polarization studies. In her Master degree She performed a small-sample radio continuum study of radio relics in galaxy clusters using the Effelsberg 100-m radio telescope at 4.86 and 8.35 GHz. Maja is continuing her work at MPIfR in the group of Prof. Dr. Michael Kramer. She investigate the polarization properties of unresolved ultra high polarized extragalactic radio sources. She will conduct a deep high resolution polarization survey of VLA data of these sources to understand their origin. She will furthermore work on high resolution wideband polarization VLA data of M51 to probing the magnetized disk-halo interaction region.

Country of origin: Germany   
Starting at the IMPRS: 02/2015
Title of the thesis: "Probing the Magnetized Disk-halo Interaction in M51 via Wideband Polarimetry"
Thesis advisor: Dr. Sui Ann Mao
Expertise: Observing experience at Effelsberg, Effelsberg Software, AIPS, CASA
http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/atlasmag
Address: MPIfR, Room  E0.03, Phone 0228 525180, email: kierdorf@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Yik Ki (Jackie) Ma did his BSc studies at the University of Hong Kong, and during his final year of the degree he studied the magnetosphere of chemically peculiar Bp/Ap stars by looking into the radio light curves with the Very Large Array. He obtained his M.Phil. degree in the same university, performing radio studies on pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) using the Australia Telescope Compact Array. In particular, he investigated the magnetic field geometry of the Snail PWN. He started his Ph.D. at MPIfR in October 2015, joining the Fundamental Physics Group led by Prof. Dr. Michael Kramer. He is working with Dr. Sui Ann Mao to understand the unusually high rotation measure found in some extragalactic sources. He will also map the magnetic field configurations of supergiant shells in the Large Magellanic Cloud to study their relationships with the galactic magnetic field.

ykma_at_mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
E0.03 MPIfR
+49 228 525 180
Thesis advisor: Dr. Sui Ann Mao more

Joseph Kuruvilla did his undergraduate studies in Physics at Christ
University in India. He joined the University of Bonn in October 2013 to
do masters in Astrophysics. He did his master thesis on "redshift-space
distortions" under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Cristiano Porciani. The
master thesis focused on understanding the redshift-space distortions
using N-body simulations.

Joseph Kuruvilla is currently enrolled in University of Bonn for his PhD
studies and continuing the work on redshift-space distortions.


Country of origin: India
Starting at the IMPRS: 02/2016
Title of the thesis: "Redshift-space distortions and the Finger-of-God
effect"
Thesis advisor: Prof. Dr. Cristiano Porciani
Address: Room 1.007, AIfA
Expertise: Python, MPI, C
email: joseph.k(at)uni-bonn.de more

Yuxin Lin did her undergraduate work in Astronomy Department at Nanjing University. Her bachelor thesis was on extragalactic OH megamasers and first-light OHM galaxy candidate catalog for Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). She obtained her Master degree in ISM group led by Prof. Di Li at National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), Chinese Academy of Sciences. During her master period, she had an internship at ASIAA in summer of 2015 and did SMA mosaic data reduction on the Galactic mini-starburst region G10.6-0.4. For her master thesis, she developed a method of systematically combining ground and space-based multi-band FIR/submm observations and based on iterative SED fittings, she analysed cloud structure of seven OB-cluster forming regions in the galaxy.
She joined submm group of MPIfR as a PhD student in Sep. 2016 and will continue doing research on massive star formation.

Country of origin: China
Starting at the IMPRS : 09/2016
Thesis advisor/supervisor: Prof. Friedrich Wyrowski and Prof. Karl Menten
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.36
Expertise: observing experience with SMA, Python, IDL, Miriad
E-mail: ylin@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Jose Guadalupe Martinez did his undergraduate and masters work at the University of Texas at Brownsville,
U.S.A.. His work at University of Texas at Brownsville included the discovery and follow-up of
pulsar J0453+1559, a double neutron star system with a large mass assymetry. Jose is continuing
his work at MPIfR in the Fundamental Physics in Radio Astronomy group. He hopes to continue
searching for pulsars and exploiting their scientific stories working with the Effelsberg High
Time Resolution Universe Legacy Survey -The North (HTRU-N) and the Arecibo 327 MHz Drift Pulsar
Survey (AO327).

Country of origin: United States of America
Starting at the IMPRS: 1/2015
Title of the thesis: "Pulsar Searching and Timing with the Effelsberg and Arecibo Radio Telescopes"
Thesis advisor: Michael Kramer, David Champion, Paulo Freire
Expertise: Observing experience at Effelsberg and Arecibo radio telescopes, pulsar searching/timing
Address: MPIfR, Room E0.10, Phone 0228 525187, email: jmartinez@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de more

Sandra Martin studied physics at the University of Bonn, Germany, and completed her studies with her diploma thesis on „The Bispectrum Covariance Beyond Gaussianity“ under the supervision of Prof. Peter Schneider in the gravitational lensing group at the Argelander-Institute for Astronomy (Univ. of Bonn). Staying in the group of Prof. Schneider, she focused in the framework of her PhD project on testing the ability of the Halo Model, particularly the Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD), to describe consistently the 2nd- and 3rd-order gravitational lensing signal measured in the CFHTLenS survey.

Country of origin: Germany   
Starting at the IMPRS: 01/2012
Title of the thesis: „Can the halo model describe 2nd- & 3rd-order gravitational lensing correlation functions consistently?„
Thesis advisor: Prof. Peter Schneider
Address: AIfA, Room 1.026, Phone 0228 733678, email: martin (at) astro.uni-bonn.de

Michael Mattern did his undergraduate work at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg, Germany. His work at University of Heidelberg included near- and mid-infrared dust extinction mapping of an exceptional, filamentary, molecular cloud and analyzing its fragmentation characteristics. Michael is continuing his work at MPIfR in the group of Karl Menten. He hopes to place strong constraints on the formation and fragmentation of filaments in the Milky Way through different observational methods.

Country of origin: Germany  
Starting at the IMPRS: 10/2014
Title of the thesis: "Early stages of star formation"
Thesis advisor: Karl Menten, Friedrich Wyrowski
Expertise: Observing experience at APEX, IDL, FORTRAN
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.40, Phone 0228 525105, email: mmattern (at) mpifr.de

Parichay Mazumdar did his undergraduate work at St. Stephen’s College, India. During his
Bachelors studies, he spent the summers of 2013 and 2014 at the National
Center For Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics (NCRA), Pune, India. There he
worked with Prof. Dr. Nissim Kanekar on Damped Lyman-Alpha Galaxies
(DLAs). They used the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to observe three recently
discovered DLAs in 21cm and used it to determine their masses. He did his
master studies at the Bonn Cologne Graduate School for Physics and
Astronomy (BCGS). He did his masters thesis at MPIfR in Prof. Dr. Karl
Menten's group. It was titled “Sub-millimeter observations of the
shocked molecular gas associated with the Supernova Remnant (SNR) W28”.
They used the APEX-Telescope to carry out a multi-molecular study of the
SNR W28F in order to better understand the physical and chemical
conditions existing in the post-shock gas in the supernova remnant.

He has started as a PhD student at Max Planck Institut für
Radioastronomie on 1st August 2017. He will work on large scale
surveys of our Milky Way to characterize the physical and chemical
conditions in molecular clouds as well as their kinematics.



Country of origin: India
Starting at the IMPRS: 08/2017
Title of the thesis: “Physical and chemical conditions in giant
molecular clouds”
Thesis advisors: Prof. Dr. Karl Menten, Dr. Friedrich Wyrowski
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.41, Phone- (0228/525) 392

Sac Nicté Medina Serrano's last position as Academic Visitor in Center of Radioastronomy and Astrophysics (CRyA-UNAM) was from July 2013-March 2014 .
She did her Master in Sciences (Astrophysics) in Astronomy Department of The University of Guanajuato (DA-UGto) Mexico and The Center of Radioastronomy and Astrophysics (CRyA) UNAM Mexico. From January 2011-Jun 2013 she completed her Bachelor in Sciences (Physics) at the Faculty of Sciences of The Autonomous University of Morelos State (FC-UAEM) Mexico. August 2005- December 2010

Country of origin: Mexico
Starting at the IMPRS: 06/2015
Title of the thesis: "Feedback of HII regions in their parental turbulent molecular clouds."
Thesis supervisor: Prof. Dr. Karl Menten
Thesis advisor: Dr. Friedrich Wyrowski
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.39, Phone +49 228 525468
Email: smedina@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Konstantinos Migkas did his undergaduate studies in Physics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. In his BSc thesis (under the supervision of Prof. Manolis Plionis), he used Supernovae of Type Ia, to tightly constrain the cosmological parameters, as well as to search for possible Hubble expansion anisotropies. After that, he obtained his M.Sc. in Astrophysics degree, in the Argelander-Institut für Astronomie, University of Bonn. In his Master's thesis, together with his supervisor Prof. Thomas Reiprich, they introduced a new method to test the validity of the Cosmological Principle, using the galaxy cluster X-ray luminosity-temperature scaling relation.

Konstantinos started his PhD as a student in the University of Bonn and member of IMPRS, on November 2017. His PhD research in the group of Prof. Thomas Reiprich, currently focuses in the development of a cosmology pipeline which will be used in the all-sky galaxy cluster sample, eeHIFLUGCS, as well as in the eROSITA all-sky catalogue of galaxy clusters.

Country of origin: Greece
Starting at the IMPRS: 11/2017
Thesis advisor: Prof. Dr. Thomas H. Reiprich
Expertise: Statistical data analysis, Fortran, Python, Gnuplot, LaTeX
Address: AIfA, Room 2.027a, e-mail: kmigkas@astro.uni-bonn.de

Ana Mikler did her undergraduate studies in Physics, at Union College, USA, where she worked with Dr. Andrea Kunder (CTIO) and Prof. Francis Wilkin (Union College). For her bachelors thesis she determined the  magnitude limits of the instability strip of the globular cluster IC4499. She then joined the Erasmus Mundus master course in astronomy and astrophysics (AstroMundus) in 2012 and completed her master thesis at Padova University (Italy) under the supervision of Prof. Alberto Alberto Franceschini. In her master thesis she studied the clustering properties of the AKARI Deep Field South (ADFS) region using HerMES observations. On October 2014 Ana joined Prof. Dr. Frank Bertoldi millimeter/submillimeter Astronomy group at the University of Bonn. For her PhD, she will work under the supervision of Dr. Kaustuv Basu studying the dynamical states of galaxy clusters through Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and X-ray observations in order to constrain cosmological models.  


Country of origin: Colombia
Starting at the IMPRS: 10/2014
Title of the thesis: "Multi-frequency analysis of thermal and non-thermal phenomena in galaxy clusters"
Thesis supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Bertoldi
Thesis advisor: Dr. Kaustuv Basu
Expertise: Observing experience at Cerro Tololo 0.9m and 1.0 m telescopes, and with the Arecibo Telescope, Python, Supermongo, LaTex
Address: AIfA, Room 1.026, Phone +49 228 733521, email: amikler_at_astro.uni-bonn.de more

Aarti received her Masters degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
in 2009. She did her Masters thesis under the supervision of Dr.
Prasanta Tripathy on the topic, "Inflationary cosmology". She started
working in Prof. Frank Bertoldi's group in the Argelander Institut fuer
Astronomie as a Ph.D. student in October 2010 after receiving the
scholarship from German Academic exchange Service (DAAD). She also did a
6 months intensive German language course in Frankfurt during March-September 2010.

Her Ph.D. thesis topic "Calibration of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect scaling
relations with APEX-SZ" deals with weighing the galaxy clusters using
the SZE observations with APEX-SZ. She modelled an unbiased estimate of
the SZ signal in the filtered APEX-SZ maps for about 45 galaxy clusters.
In her thesis, she cross-correlates the SZ masses  and the weak lensing
masses for a well-defined X-ray selected sample while taking into
account various sample selection biases using a Bayesian approach.
Weighing the mass observables accurately is important for using galaxy
clusters as cosmological probes.

Expertise: IDL, python, SZ observations and data analysis, Bayesian
analysis, scaling relations

Thesis title: "Calibration of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect scaling
relations with APEX-SZ"

Room: 1.025, AIFA
email: aarti (at) astro.uni-bonn.de

Dhanya G Nair did her undergraduate in Physics at Mahatma Gandhi University, India and her master degree in Astrophysics at University of Pune, India. She did her master thesis in Extra-Galactic  Astronomy on “The Efficiency of Black holes in triggering Jets in Radio loud sources as a function of redshift” using the SDSS (DR10) and Very Large Array FIRST Survey at National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), TIFR, India. She developed a code in Fortran to find the counter parts in large samples from optical and radio catalogs and sampled the radio luminosities in redshift space and found that the fraction of radio loud sources are higher at a redshift space, z > 1 and z < 3, with the optimal combination of black hole spin and accretion rate.

She started her PhD at the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) group at the MPIfR in June 2014. She is doing a survey of Ultra-Compact Extra Galactic Radio sources at 86 GHz using the Global mm-VLBI Array to sample the scales as small as 10^3 - 10^4 Schwarzschild radii of the central black hole in Active Galactic Nuclei. This will help to understand the jet regions where acceleration and collimation of the relativistic flow take place. She is focusing on modeling the brightness temperature distribution in the inner regions of relativistic jets on par-sec scales.

Country of origin: India
Starting at the IMPRS: 06/2014
Title of thesis: "86 GHz ground-based and space-based VLBI survey of Compact Extra Galactic Radio Sources"
Thesis advisor: Dr. Andrei P Lobanov, Prof. Dr. J. Anton Zensus
Expertise: Python, Fortran, C, Aips, Difmap, Latex, Topcat, observing experience at Effelsberg radio telescope, millimeter data reduction and analysis
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.05, Phone +49 228 525 366 e-mail: dhanya@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Hans Nguyen did his BSc studies in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, Canada where he used the ThrUMMS survey and associated Spitzer and Herschel data, to do a multiwavelength study of the RCW 106 molecular cloud.

He completed his MSc at the University of Bonn developing a source extraction code with fellow master student Chandrashekar Murugeshan and Dr. Andreas Brunthaler and used it to find Formaldehyde sources in VLA data as part of the GLOSTAR survey.

He is continuing this work within his PhD thesis as an IMPRS student improving the code and applying it to new data sets to find tracers of, and better understand early high-mass star formation.

Country of origin: Canada
Starting at the IMPRS: 02/2016
Title of the thesis: "A study of Formaldehyde and Methanol in the Galactic plane as part of the GLOSTAR survey"
Thesis advisor: Prof. Dr. Karl Menten, Dr. Andreas Brunthaler
Expertise: Observing experience with GMRT radio telescope.
Programming with Python, Fortran, bash/tcsh, Gildas, CASA

Address: MPIfR, Room E2.39, Phone +49 228 525468, email: hnguyen (at) mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Prajwal Padmanabh pursued a Masters in Physics and Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronics as part of a dual degree course in BITS-Pilani Goa, India. He worked at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune,India for his Masters thesis. Currently he is working in the Fundamental Physics in Radio Astronomy group at MPIfR headed by Dr. Kramer. His work  mainly involves Pulsar search using the upcoming MeerKAT telescope in South Africa.

Country of Origin : India
Starting at IMPRS : 05/2017
Title of thesis : Searching for Radio Pulsars with MeerKAT
Thesis advisors: Ewan Barr, Ramesh Karuppusamy, Michael Kramer
Address: MPIfR, Room 0.06
E-mail: prajwalvp@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Nataliya Porayko did her undergraduate work in the Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) at the Faculty of Physics with strong cooperation with Sternberg Astronomical Institute (SAI), Russian Federation. Her master thesis work at Lomonosov MSU was mostly concentrated on pulsar timing analysis. In her Master's thesis written under the supervision of Valentin N. Rudenko they applied Bayesian approach to the problem of detection of monochromatic gravitational wave signals. Beside this, she has been involved in the ongoing gravitational redshift experiment on the space radio telescope RadioAstron.
Nataliya is continuing her work at the MPIfR in the group of Prof. Michael Kramer. She studies the RM and DM data obtained with LOFAR and Effelsberg telescope in order to investigate fine-structure of the Galactic magnetic field and its free electron content. Another part of her PhD project will be connected with using LOFAR ISM data in order to correct for interstellar medium in high-frequency band.


Country of origin: Russian Federation
Starting at the IMPRS: 06/2015
Title of the thesis: "Probing the interstellar medium with LOFAR telescope"
Thesis advisor: Aris Noutsos, Joris Verbiest
Expertise: Wolframe Mathematica, Python, Tempo2
Address: MPIfR, Room E0.04, Phone 0228 525181, e-mail: nporayko@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Fatimah Raihan completed her undergraduate studies in Applied Physics at the
National University of Malaysia (UKM). She joined the University of Bonn in October 2013 for
her MSc in Astrophysics. She worked in the cosmology group in AIfA as a "studentische Hilfskraft"
and did her MSc thesis on "Testing the accuracy of 3D-HST photometric redshifts for weak lensing studies",
working closely with Dr. Tim Schrabback under the supervision of Prof. Peter Schneider.
Fatimah Raihan is now currently enrolled in University of Bonn for her PhD studies and continuing the
work on photometric redshifts calibration. She is the head tutor for the Astrophysic lab course
S261 Optical Astronomy and also an active member of the AIfA Astroclub.
Fatimah Raihan also in charge and manages the use of the AIfA 50-cm Cassegrain telescope.


Country of origin: Malaysia
Starting at the IMPRS: 03/2017
Title of the thesis: "Recalibration of photometric redshifts for weak lensing studies"
Thesis advisor: Dr. Tim Schrabback
Address: Room 2.025, AIfA
Expertise: Python, Bash, Latex
email: fraihan(at)astro.uni-bonn.de

Richa Sharma completed her undergraduate studies in Physics at Miranda House, University of Delhi, India. She obtained her Master’s degree in Astrophysics from University of Bonn. She did her Master thesis work under the supervision of Dr. Maria Massi in mm-submm group at MPIfR. The title of her thesis was ‘Probing radio variability and gamma-ray emission in microquasars’ and in particular she worked on the radio and TeV data of HMXB LSI +61 303. She recently joined MPIfR as an IMPRS PhD researcher and she will continue her work with Dr. Maria Massi, understanding the accretion-ejection coupling in X-ray binaries.

Country of origin: India
Starting at the IMPRS: 09/2017
Thesis advisor: Dr. Maria Massi
Expertise: C++, Python, LaTeX, bash, Gnuplot
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.39, e-mail: rsharma@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Basilio Solís-Castillo did his Bachelor in Physics at the Catholic University of the North in Antofagasta, Chile. In his thesis he studied the dust properties of starburst galaxy NGC253 using sub millimeter data from IRAS, SEST and HHT. He continued his studies with a master in astrophysics at the Catholic University of Chile in Santiago, Chile, where he used an N-body cosmological simulation and a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation to analyze the effects that an AGN can generate in the star formation of neighboring galaxies.
In October 2015 he joined mm/sub mm group at AIfA working under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Bertoldi and Dr. Marcus Albrecht. His research focuses on the dust-to-gas mass ratio in nearby galaxies and its implications on dust evolution models. He is using far-infrared and sub millimeter observations for performing a comprehensive analysis of the functional dependences of the dust-to-gas mass ratio (DGR) on the underlying ISM conditions, including metallicity.
Country of origin: Chile
Starting at the IMPRS: 04/2017
Title of the thesis: “The dust-to-gas mass ratio in nearby galaxies and its implications on dust evolution models”.
Thesis advisors: Prof. Dr. Frank Bertoldi and Dr. Marcus Albrecht.
Address: AIfA, Room 1.025, Phone: +49-(0)228-73-3534, email: bsolis@astro.uni-bonn.de
Expertise: Python, GILDAS, IDL, Fortran95 and CASA.

Vivien Thiel did her undergraduate work at the University of Bonn, Germany. In her Master thesis she studied the small-scale structure of QSO absorption systems in the Milky Way halo in HI emission using interferometric data from WSRT and ATCA.
In June 2015 she joined the millimeter/submillimeter Astronomy group at the MPIfR. Vivien investigates the physical and chemical small-scale structure of diffuse and translucent molecular clouds along the line of sight to the Sgr B2 molecular cloud using ALMA data. The data provides an excellent opportunity to study molecular and isotopic abundances not only on sub-parsec scales in Sgr B2 itself, but also along the whole 8 kpc long line of sight to the Galactic center.  

Country of origin: Germany
Starting at the IMPRS: 08/2015
Title of the thesis: "High-angular-resolution absorption studies along the line of sight of Sgr B2"
Thesis advisor: Dr. Arnaud Belloche, Prof. Dr. Karl Menten
Expertise: Python, CLASS, LaTeX, CASA, KARMA, Miriad, GnuPlot, Basics in C/C++, MATLAB and fortran
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.36, Phone: 0228 525464, email: vthiel@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

M. Tiwari did her undergraduate work at St. Stephen’s College, India and her master studies at Indian institute of Technology, India. Her master thesis was in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics,  “Studying the structural and Bulk properties of TiSi2” which is quite useful in Ultra Large Scale Integration Circuits.
She has started as a PhD student at Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie from 1st January 2016. She will be doing a comprehensive survey of Messier 8 which a Photo- dissociation region in Sagittarius. This survey will lead us to understand Diffuse Interstellar Bands and to also explain the abundance of hydrocarbons in PDRs which may be due to the fragmentation of PAHs.

Country of origin: India
Starting at the IMPRS: 01/2016
Title of the thesis: “Unveiling the remarkable PDR of M8 and its link to Diffuse Interstellar Bands”
Thesis advisors: Prof. Dr. Karl Menten, Dr. Friedrich Wyrowski
Address: MPIfR, Room 2.40, Phone +491628639495, email id: mtiwari@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
Expertise: millimeter data reduction and analysis, GILDAS (CLASS & GreG). Basics: Python, Gnuplot.

Efthalia (Thalia) Traianou did her undergraduate studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. The title of her diploma thesis was “CCD photometric observations of active galactic nuclei and their neighbours in order to detect elements of physical interaction”, and her supervisor was Professor Manolis Plionis. For the purposes of this paper, she used the largest optical telescope in Greece (http://helmos.astro.noa.gr/) to observe a selected sample of nearby AGN galaxies and their neighbours using H-a and O-III narrow band filters, as well as B and R broad band filters. The objective of her diploma thesis was to identify star forming regions between pairs resulting from their gravitational interactions. This could be an indication of the transition of active galaxies from Type I Seyfert galaxies to Type II Seyfert galaxies through the exchange of matter and not on account of the pointing angle, as provided for by the integration model.   For her PhD she is working under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Krichbaum in the group of Prof. Dr. Anton Zensus. Her project is based on high-resolution VLBI studies of extragalactic jets. Country of origin : Greece Starting at the IMPRS : 11/2016 Thesis advisors : Dr. Thomas Krichbaum Expertise : Observing experience at the Aristarchos 2.3 telescope, IRAF noise reduction, GAIA data analysis, Fortran, Python, Gnuplot, LaTeX. Address : MPIfR, Room 2.36, Phone:366 , email: etraianou@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

Sandra Unruh did her undergraduate work at the University of Bonn. She did her Master thesis in Peter Schneider's group about strong lensing, i.e. ambiguities in mass profile determinations “Source Position Transformation” including the well-known Mass Sheet Degeneracy as a special case. Sandra is continuing her work at AIfA with Peter Schneider as a part of the Euclid program. She hopes to get a grip on the magnification bias in shear ratio tests of weak lensing.

Country of origin: Germany   
Starting at the IMPRS: 05/2015
Title of the thesis: “Generalized shear ratio tests”
Thesis advisor: Peter Schneider
Expertise: C, Mathematica, GnuPlot, LaTeX (basics in Python, bash scripting)
Address: AIfA, Room 2.010
Phone: 0228 73-6588
email: sandra@astro.uni-bonn.de

Laura Vega Garcia studied her BSc. in Physics at the University of Valencia (Spain). During her BSc. she studied one year abroad at the University of Bonn as an ERASMUS exchange student.
Her BSc. thesis was based on imaging of three different blazars, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Eduardo Ros.
After that, she came back to Bonn to do her MSc. in Astrophysics. During her master she had the opportunity to work as a "studentische Hilfskraft" in the MPIfR correlator.
Her MSc. work was centered on the study of the parsec-scale jet in the quasar 0836+710 using space-VLBI observations with the spacecraft RadioAstron.
She obtained high resolution images and study the transversal structure of the flow.
Her master thesis was supervised by Dr. Andrei Lobanov in the group of Prof. Anton Zensus at MPIfR.
For her PhD. she will continue in Prof. Anton Zensus's group under the supervision of Dr. Andrei Lobanov. The project is based on space-VLBI studies of physics of extragalactic relativistic jets.


Country of origin: Spain
Starting at the IMPRS: 02/2016
Title of the thesis: "space-VLBI investigations of physics of extragalactic relativistic jets"
Thesis advisor: Dr. Andrei Lobanov
Expertise : Python, C, AIPS, Difmap, CASA, SCHED, IRAF, LaTeX, fourfit
Address: MPIfR, Room 3.23, phone: 0228 525385 e-mail: lauvegar@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

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Victoria Yankelevich did her undergraduate work at the Southern Federal University (SFedU) at the Faculty of Physics at the Astrophysical Department,  Russian Federation.   In her Bachelor thesis she studied the dynamics of globular clusters in the gravitation field of unstable dark matter of Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds. Victoria’s Master work also was done in SFedU with strong cooperation with Astro Space Center of Lebedev Physical Institute of Russian Academy of Science. The thesis is about constraints on the cosmological power spectrum distortions through the halo mass function, where she studies different types of cosmological models and its influence on the mass functions. Victoria is continuing her work at the AIfA in the group of Prof.
Cristiano Porciani. She studies the Large Scale Structure, galaxy clustering and different cosmological models with the Euclid mission. Country of origin: Russian Federation Starting at the IMPRS: 09/2015 Title of the thesis: "Galaxy clustering and cosmology with the Euclid mission" Thesis advisor: Cristiano Porciani Expertise: Maple, Fortran, Matlab, Gnuplot, Origin Address: AIfI, Room 2.025, Phone 0228 733661, e-mail: vyankelevich (at) astro.uni-bonn.de

Michal Zajacek obtained his bachelor degree in general physics in 2012 at the Charles University in Prague. In his bachelor thesis "Late heavy bombardment at various places of the Solar System" he used N-body  simulations to study the dynamics of the Solar System in its early history. In 2014 he finished the master degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the same university. The master thesis dealt with the physics of compact stellar objects near the Galactic centre, focusing on their interaction with the ambient medium and possible observable effects. In 2014 he was also awarded RNDr. degree (Czech Doctor of natural sciences)  by defending the enlarged and updated master thesis. Michal is continuing his work on the Galactic centre physics in Andreas Eckart's group at the University of Cologne. By combining models with observations he hopes to constrain the properties of near-infrared excess sources, star-formation, stellar dynamics, and the flaring activity of Sgr A*. Moreover, he is aiming at linking the Galactic centre research with the study of galaxy evolution across optical emission line diagrams. To this aim he is performing observations of  galaxies from the FIRST survey with the Effelsberg radiotelescope at 4.8 GHz and 10.5 GHz.  

Country of origin: Slovakia
Starting at the IMPRS: 09/2014
Title of the thesis: Physics close to the Galactic Center
Thesis advisor: Prof. Dr. Andreas Eckart
Expertise: numerical methods, observing experience at Effelsberg radiotelescope, python, fortran, adaptive optics measurements
Address: 1st Instit. of Physics, Uni Cologne, Room 209, +49 221 470 7791
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Chaoli Zhang did his undergraduate studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. He obtained his master degree at Leiden University in Netherlands. For his master thesis, he worked with Prof. Dr. Huub Rottgering on the large-scale structure around a high-redshift radio galaxy (Z>2), using data from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) and Herschel SPIRE. Prior to his master thesis, he worked with Prof. Dr. Koenraad Kuijken for a minor project on weak lensing. After finishing his master studies, he took a gap year to work at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Peking University as well as in the Shanghai Observatory. During the work in China, he became interested in the field of star clusters. He used the HST/VISTA observations to investigate on the mass function for one of the largest Globular Star Cluster in our galaxy, 49 Tucanae. In October 2017, he joined Prof. Dr. Thomas Reiprich's Dark Energy Group at Argelander Institute of Astronomy (AIfA) for a Ph.D. thesis, and he will continue the cosmology study, but this time, through the galaxy clusters in X-rays.



Country of origin: China
Starting at the IMPRS: 10/2017
Title of thesis: Galaxy clusters in X-rays
Thesis advisor: Prof. Dr. Thomas Reiprich and Prof. Dr. Peter Schneider
Expertise: Python, LaTeX/Lyx, Mathematica, CIAO, HEASOFT, Topcat, CASA, PyMC
Address: AIfA, Room 2.027A, e-mail: chaoli@astro.uni-bonn.de