Gruber-Funded Summer Research Programme 2024
Gruber-Funded
Summer Research Programme at ESO
Garching, Germany
10 June - 18 July 2025
Three projects fully funded by the Gruber Foundation Fellowship programme (paid at a similar level as ESO’s Summer Research Programme) are available for the summer of 2025. For this programme, applications will be accepted from promising students of any country, although priority will be given to those from developing countries. The student will be based at ESO, Garching and will be supervised by Pooneh Nazari at ESO and Danial Langeroodi at DARK, University of Copenhagen. Participating in courses offered by ESO during this time is not mandatory but encouraged. This is an opportunity for university students who are not yet enrolled in a PhD programme and are interested in gaining experience in astrophysical research.
The Gruber-Funded Summer Research Programme at ESO will be hosted in Garching.
Travel costs to/from Garching at the start and end of the programme will be covered for participants of the programme. Accommodation will be provided in a shared apartment in Garching (with electricity, heating and internet all included). Students will also receive a modest stipend to cover living costs during the programme. Successful students are responsible for acquiring the required visas to spend six weeks working in Germany under these conditions.
Projects:
Modelling icy envelopes (supervisor: Pooneh Nazari)
After the launch of JWST multiple studies have analysed the ice abundances in protostellar systems. However, it is not clear whether and how the measured ice column density ratios change for objects with different physical structures. In this project, the student will use radiative transfer models to measure ice abundances of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and water in protostellar systems with a variety of physical conditions and assess whether changes in physical conditions across systems will alter the column density ratios. This will be done by running radiative transfer models of RADMC3D and analysing their outputs using Python. The exact scope of the project will be developed in consultation with the student, to take their interest into account.
Hunt for new molecules (supervisor: Pooneh Nazari)
Hundreds of molecules have been detected in the interstellar medium in the past decades. However, this number is still growing as new data become available. In this project, the student will use archival ALMA data of one or more objects to search for new molecules. A particular attention will be given to 3-carbon species. The project involves downloading the spectra from ALMA archive and first modelling as many lines as possible with CASSIS spectral analysis tool before focusing on the weaker lines of potentially exotic species. The exact scope of the project will be developed in consultation with the student, to take their interest into account.
Galaxy evolution (primary supervisor: Danial Langeroodi, secondary supervisor: Pooneh Nazari)
A project is available on the topic of galaxy evolution. The project will broadly cover use of ALMA and JWST archival data to better understand the chemical enrichment and evolution of galaxies. The exact scope and topic of the project will be developed in consultation with the student, to take their interest into account.
For inquiries about the programme, please email grubersummerprogramme@eso.org.