Oral title: Classical Cepheids in the direction of the Galactic bulge

Oral abstract: Classical Cepheids are among the most useful Galactic and nearby extragalactic 
distance tracers because of their well-defined period–luminosity relations. Moreover they are young 
stars, with ages ranging 20-300Myr. Using data from the VVV survey we are now able to study these 
young standard candles in highly reddened regions of our Galaxy that were previously hidden to us. 
We have discovered several Cepheid candidates close to the Galactic plane. Population I Cepheids 
must compose an important fraction of our sample. In this talk, I will show the results of a NIR 
spectroscopic follow-up of 24 Cepheid candidates in the direction of the bulge and 22 in the southern 
disk, together with the results of a variability search towards the inner region of the bulge (|L|<5°) 
using VVV multi-epoch PSF photometry to find new Cepheid candidates.