Giovanni Carraro is a support astronomer at VLT Paranal and HAWKI instrument scientist. He received his PhD in Astronomy from Padova university in 1996. He was a postdoc at SISSA/ISAS and Padova university, and later he was Andes Fellow at Yale and the universidad de Chile. Since 1999 he holds a professorship at Padova University. His scientific interests include open star clusters and Milky Way structure and evolution, Galaxy formation, and small objects in the solar system. Giovanni is the actual president of the IAU commission 37 "Star Cluster and Association", and serves as Scientific Editor of the Astrophysical Journal.

Personal home page

Stellar Populations

Itziar de Gregorio-Monsalvo
(JAO/SCV)

Itziar de Gregorio-Monsalvo is the Head of the ALMA Program Management group.  She did her PhD in the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology,  using the NASA Deep Space Network antennas to set up Radio Astronomy observations and performing star formation studies at centimeter wavelengths.  She joint ESO in 2006 as an ESO ALMA fellow with duties at the APEX telescope,  the Atacama Test Facility (in Socorro, New Mexico), and the Operations  Support Facilities near San Pedro de Atacama.   She became ESO Faculty member in 2010, working as an ALMA Science Operations Astronomer. 
Her main research activities are focused in star and planetary formation, in particular: 

• Star, planets, and brown dwarfs formation
  
• Protoplanetary disks formation and evolution
• Jets and molecular outflows
• Astrophysical masers
• Centimeter, Millimeter and Submillimeter Astronomy: Interferometry and Single Dish techniques

Planets and Star Formation

Willem-Jan de Wit is a VLTI support astronomer. His scientific interest is star formation and in particular the formation of massive stars. With the VLTI, he studies the harsh environment of the immediate vicinity of massive stars during their assembly process. His research involves the properties of young stellar clusters and how they relate to the character of massive star formation in Galaxies. He received his PhD from the University of Utrecht in 2001.

Scientific interests:

• Star formation and young stellar clusters
• Long baseline optical interferometry
• Circumstellar material and stellar variability

Michael Dumke
(APEX/SCV)

Michael Dumke is support astronomer at the APEX project. He received his PhD from Bonn University in 1997 for his work on the interstellar medium in nearby galaxies. Since then, he gained a lot of experience in radio astronomical instrumentation and techniques as a post-doc or staff member at IRAM Grenoble, the Heinrich-Hertz Submillimeter Telescope in Arizona, and the Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn. In 2004, he joined ESO as part of the science operations team of the APEX telescope. His main research interests are molecular gas at low and high redshift, disk-halo interaction, magnetic fields, cold dust, and the ISM in general in normal and active galaxies.

Personal home page

Dimitri Gadotti
(PAO/SCV)

Dimitri Gadotti is an ESO Staff Astronomer since April 2013. Before, he was a fellow since October 2009. He has duties on Cerro Paranal and loves to work on the mountain! Dimitri obtained his Ph.D. degree at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2004, with a thesis on the formation and evolution of stellar bars in galaxies, using both spectroscopic and photometric data in optical and near-infrared passbands, as well as N-body simulations and analytical calculations. After his Ph.D. he spent 5 years in Europe at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, France, and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. His works focus on bulges of disc galaxies, barred galaxies, dwarf galaxies, supermassive black holes and AGN activity, comparing measurements of the dynamics and structure of stellar systems to theoretical models, and thus trying to understand how such systems came to be. He is author of the BUDDA code, a public available software to perform detailed structural analysis of galaxies.
His main topics are:

• Pseudo-bulges, classical bulges and elliptical galaxies
  
• Formation and evolution of stellar bars in galaxies
  
• Supermassive black holes and active galactic nuclei

Evolution of Galaxies and the ISM

Diego Garcia-Appadoo
(JAO/SCV)

Diego Garcia-Appadoo is an ALMA Operations Astronomer since January 2011. He obtained his Degree, Masters and PhD at Cardiff University in the UK, working on blind, HI surveys and the properties of HI-selected galaxies. After which he did a two year postdoc at the Radioastronomy Institute of the University of Bonn followed by 3.5 years as an ESO Fellow with duties at ALMA. His scientific and research interests lie on the gas (atomic and molecular) and dust properties of galaxies.

Julien Girard
(PAO/SCV)

Julien Girard is an Operations Staff Astronomer who joined ESO in 2009. Adaptive Optics specialist, he's currently the Instrument Scientist of SPHERE  His research focuses on constraining the formation and migration mechanisms of giant extra-solar planets in young and dusty circumstellar environments (e.g disks) through direct imaging. For that, Julien uses high angular/contrast imaging techniques extensively, mainly in the infrared and from the ground.
After completing a Master in Instrumentation Physics from the University of Utah in 2000, he obtained a 2nd Master in Astrophysics at UJF/IPAG ( Grenoble) the next year and his PhD in 2005 (UCBL/Observatoire de Lyon), validating the concept of polychromatic laser guide star on-sky. Before ESO, he also spent 3 years in Mexico City as a Postdoctoral Fellow at UNAM and as Assistant Professor at IPN. Enjoying public outreach, Julien is one of the ESO Photo Ambassadors.

Fields of interests:

• Planets and Star Formation (Exoplanets, Brown Dwarfs, Disks)
• Adaptive Optics and High Contrast Imaging
• Astronomical Instrumentation and Observing Techniques/Strategies

Personal home page

Boris Haeussler
(PAO/SCV)

Boris Hö¤uöŸler (Haeussler) is an ESO staff astronomer at Paranal as of November 2015. Born in Karlsruhe, he received his Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Heidelberg in Germany (PhD thesis at MPIA). He then moved to Nottingham, UK for 2 consecutive 2 postdoc positions and, after another postdoc in Oxford (while also being associated with Hertfordshire), he moved to ESO/Santiago to work at Paranal Observatory.
His main interest lies in galaxy formation and evolution, especially how galaxies transform from the blue cloud of star-forming (disk-dominated) galaxies into the red & spheroid-dominated galaxies that populate the red sequence today. He is a member of several large collaborations (CANDELS, GAMA, VIDEO) to explore this transformation over a large fraction of cosmic time.
He is also one of the authors and the current keeper of the public GALAPAGOS code, which runs galaxy profile fitting on a large galaxy sample automatically.
This code uses GalfitM, an extended Galfit version that uses multiple images at different wavelengths simultaneously in order to improve the quality of the fits and produce more stable results, allowing the extension of galaxy samples to fainter magnitudes. GALAPAGOS/GalfitM also enable more accurate bulge-disk-decompositions, and the derivation of colour-magnitude or magnitude-size-relations for the individual galaxy components.

His research interests are:

• Galaxy formation and evolution
• Galaxy transformation from blue, star-forming disks to red, "dead" ellipticals
• Build-up of the red sequence
• Bulge/Disc decomposition of galaxies both at low and high redshift (redshift, not km/s)

Personal home page

Evolution of galaxies

George Hau
(PAO/SCV)

George Hau received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1998. After postdoctoral positions at P.U. Catolica, ESO (as Fellow), Durham and Swinburne, George returned to ESO as Operations Staff Astronomer in 2010, supporting the adaptive optics effort at ESO. He is currently the SINFONI and EFOSC2 Instrument Scientists, and MUSE #2 Instrument Scientist, and formerly NACO#2 Instrument Scientist. He is also the UT4 team leader. George has broad interests on extragalactic astronomy, the topics include:

• Galaxy formation and Evolution
• "Galaxy Archaeology" using the morphological, kinematic and stellar population signatures.
• Kinematically decoupled cores (KDCs) and shells in early-type galaxies.

Pascale Hibon
(PAO/SCV)

• High redshift galaxies
  
• Galaxy evolution & formation
• Galaxy clusters

Andreas Kaufer is the Director of the La Silla Paranal Observatory. He received his degree in Physics from Heidelberg University in 1993. In 1996 he graduated with a PhD in Astronomy from the same university. He became ESO staff member in 1999 and joined the VLT Science Operations department. He has been the Paranal instrument scientists of UVES and later FLAMES. In 2003 he became the instrumentation scientist of the La Silla Paranal Observatory. His research activities focus on the fields of stellar astrophysics, galaxy evolution, and state-of-the-art astronomical instrumentation.

Rö¼diger Kneissl joined ESO in 2009 as Science Operations Astronomer in the ALMA project. He received his PhD from the University of Munich and the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics in 1997. During appointments at the University of Cambridge, UC Berkeley and MPI for Radio Astronomy in Bonn he worked with various radio interferometers and the APEX telescope. He has also been involved in the Planck satellite mission for many years. His main scientific interest is in

• Cosmic Microwave Background
• Galaxy Clusters via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect
  
• High-Redshift Dusty Galaxies

Cosmology and the Early Universe

Cö©dric Ledoux is support astronomer at the Very Large Telescope. He is the instrument scientist responsible for UVES, the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph. His main research interests include the properties and evolution of galaxies as revealed by QSO absorption-line systems, the study of molecules and dust in the interstellar medium of high-redshift galaxies, the distribution of the gas in and around the host galaxies of Gamma-Ray Bursts, and the detection of galaxies in emission up to the highest redshifts.

Evolution of Galaxies and the ISM; Cosmology and the Early Universe

Stö©phane Leon Tanne is System Astronomer at ALMA. He received his PhD from the University Paris 7 in 1998. His main interests are the effects of the environment on stellar systems. He studied the tidal tails in globular clusters using wide field telescopes and numerical simulations. While he was working at IRAM (Spain) he studied the dynamics of the molecular gas in galaxies using single-dish and interferometer telescopes. Since his post-docs at ASIAA (Taiwan) and at the Instituto de Astrofö­sica de Andalucö­a (Spain) he works actively on the ISM content of radio galaxies, barred and isolated galaxies.

Gaspare Lo Curto
(PAO/SCV)

Gianni Marconi is Commissioning Scientist of the ALMA Observatory (Array Group lead). He received his degree (cum Laude) in Astronomy from Bologna University in 1987. In 1991 he graduated with a PhD in Astronomy from the same university. From 1994 to 2005 he held an assistant professorship and was member of the Director Board at the Observatory of Rome.  In 1999 he became ESO staff member and joined the VLT Science Operations department. He has been the Paranal instrument scientists of VIMOS between 2002 and 2005. From 2006 to 2010 he has been the Instrumentation Operation Teams Coordinator of the La Silla Paranal Observatory. From 2010 he has been seconded to the JAO office for the commissioning of ALMA.  His main research activities focus on the fields of stellar astrophysics, star formation history and chemical evolution of galaxies, and state-of-the-art astronomical instrumentation and telescopes.

Scientific interests:

• Globular Clusters
• Open Clusters
• Chemical Abundances of stars in the Local Group
• Star Formation and Chenical Evolution History of Dwarf Galaxies in the Local Group
• X-rays Binaries
• Neutron Stars

Stellar populations; Evolution of Galaxies and ISM

Christophe Martayan joined ESO in 2009 as Paranal support astronomer and will be FLAMES instrument scientist. He received his PhD in Physics-astrophysics from Paris XI University and Meudon Observatory, France in 2005. By after he was employed at the ESO-Garching, the Paris Observatory, and  the Royal Observatory of Belgium. He worked as manager of modules for the scientific preparation of the GAIA space mission, and on the analysis of million of spectra taken with the ESO-WFI in its slitless mode. His current research activities concern the stellar evolution of massive and emission-line stars (O, B, Be, LBV, GRB) in different environments of metallicity (Milky Way, Magellanic Clouds, etc). He is also involved in the GAIA space mission about emission-line stars and in the scientific preparation of a multi-object spectrograph for the E-ELT.

Sergio Martin
(JAO/SCV)

• Evolution of active galaxies
  
• Molecular spectroscopy of galactic nuclei
• The Galactic Center 

Gautier Mathys is Lead Astronomer of the Proposal Handling Team. He obtained his PhD in Physics in 1983, and his Habilitation in 1990, both at the University of Liege. After 8 years in Switzerland (first at the ETH in Zurich, then at the Geneva Observatory), he moved to ESO-Chile in 1991, where he worked as support astronomer at the La Silla Observatory and, as of 1998, at the Paranal Observatory; in particular he was Head of Science Operations from 1999 to early 2006. From 2006 to 2011, he was Head of ESO's  Observing Programmes Office, in charge of the support of the observing proposal selection process. His main research interests are stellar magnetic fields and stellar pulsation, with particular emphasis on the chemically peculiar A- and B-type stars.

Andrea Mehner
(PAO/SCV)

Stellar Structure and Evolution

Scientific interests:

• Late stages of massive star evolution
• Variable massive stars
• Supernova impostors and progenitors

Jorge Melnick

Jorge Melnick was the VLT Programme Scientist.  His research interests include violent star formation, galactic and extragalactic starbursts and the evolution of  massive stars. 
He is now retired as astronomer emeritus at ESO.

Claudio Melo
(PAO/SCV)

Claudio Melo is Head of the Office for Science in Chile. His main interests focus in finding planets in different environments such as open clusters, metal poor stars and young stars. From the technical point of view, Claudio is familiar with high-precision radial velocity measurements and interested in how to overcome the different sources of noise to reach the 10cm/s precision with ESPRESSO and eventually to find an exo-Earth. For the coming years, he is willing to develop new projects in the field of Astrobiology.

Personal home page

Antoine Mö©rand
(PAO/SCV)

Antoine Mö©rand received his PhD in Astronomy from Paris University (France) in 2005. In 2006, he moved to the CHARA Array interferometer (operated by Georgia State University, USA) to work on instrumentation developments and to complete observation programs he started during his PhD. In 2008, he joined ESO as an operation astronomer at VLTI, as well as instrument scientist of AMBER (2008-2010) and PRIMA instrument scientist (2010-2014), and is now acting as VLTI System Scientist (since 2012). His main reasearch interests are determining distances to Cepheids pulsating stars, determination of stellar fundamental parameters and instrumentation for optical interferometry.

Stellar Structure and Evolution

Steffen Mieske
(PAO/SCV)

Steffen Mieske is the Head of Science Operations at Paranal as of July 2015. He obtained his PhD in astronomy in 2005 from Bonn University. Between 2000 and 2004 he spent about 3 years in Chile at PUC, pursueing research for his Master's and PhD theses. In 2005 he joined ESO as a fellow in Garching and moved to ESO Chile in August 2008 as Staff Astronomer. Steffen has acted as instrument scientist of OmegaCAM and VIMOS, and was Deputy Head of Science Operations between 2014 and 2015 before moving to his current position in July 2015.
His scientific interests comprise the high-mass end of the globular cluster population and ultra-compact dwarf galaxies (UCDs), and generally the internal dynamics of compact stellar systems. He also works on photometric properties of extragalactic dwarf galaxies, such as their scaling relations and luminosity function. During his PhD time, he studied the shape of the Hubble flow in the "Great Attractor" region.

Personal home page

Francisco M. Montenegro Montes is support astronomer in the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) telescope. He studied optical astronomy in Tenerife (Spain) at the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) and completed his Ph.D. working at the Istituto di Radioastronomia (INAF-IRA) in Bologna (Italy). His main research interest is the study of AGNs through multi-wavelength observations. In particular, he has worked on the characterization of the radio properties of Broad Absorption Line Quasars (BAL QSOs), which are quasars showing wide troughs bluewards the main UV resonance lines. The principal finding of these studies has been the similar properties found in radio sources associated with BAL QSOs and those young Compact Steep Spectrum (CSS) and GigaHertz-Peaked Spectrum (GPS) radio sources.  Since 2009, Francisco has joined the Science Operations group at the APEX telescope, where he has obtained extensive experience in the operation and maintenance of the APEX antenna, giving observing support, executing calibration and quality control procedures for its instrumentation (bolometers and heterodyne receivers) as well as developing operational procedures. He is responsible at APEX for the ESO data archiving procedures.

Personal home page

Juan Carlos Muö±oz
(PAO/SCV)

Juan Carlos Muö±oz Mateos is a Paranal Operations Staff Astronomer. He is mainly interested in galaxy formation and evolution, as well as the physics of the interstellar medium. He completed his PhD in 2010 at Complutense University in Madrid, Spain. In his thesis he worked extensively with UV, optical, IR and radio data to map the distribution of stars, gas and dust in nearby galaxies, and used that information to constrain the past assembly and evolution of galaxies. He then moved as a postdoc to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, USA, where he worked within the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G). He led and developed the S4G surface photometry pipeline, and used the S4G data to investigate how features such as bars and spiral arms can drive stellar migration in galaxies. He now plans to exploit ESO's existing and upcoming instruments to further pursue his research on galaxy assembly at different redshifts.

Personal home page

Rodrigo Parra is Support Astronomer at the APEX project. He obtained an Electrical Engineering Degree at Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria and a MSc in (Microwave) Digital Communications Systems at Chalmers University in Sweden. Subsequently, he received a PhD in Radio Astronomy from the Onsala Space Observatory in 2007. In addition to his expertise in single dish mm-astronomy, he has specialized in continuum and spectral line cm and mm wave interferometric techniques, particularly VLBI. He is deeply interested in the study of possible evolutionary connections between AGN and starburst activity. One of the guiding questions of his research is whether or not the 100 parsec regions of starburst activity seen in external galaxies are scaled up versions of galactic star forming regions. If not, what makes them different? He has studied star formation and AGN activity using cm and mm wavelength VLBI observations of large samples of galaxies as well as deep cm and mm wavelength interferometry of single objects. He also actively collaborates in several research projects whose topics include Interstellar Masers (OH megamaser galaxies and Hydrogen masers), dense molecular gas in star-forming regions and theoretical models of propagation of radiation in clumpy media.

Scientific interests:

• AGN/Starburst Activity
• Interferometry
• Type II Supernovae
• Radiative Transfer Models

Evolution of Galaxies and the ISM

Juan-Pablo Pö©rez-Beaupuits
(APEX)

Juan-Pablo Pö©rez-Beaupuits is an APEX Staff Astronomer since August 2015. He obtained an Electrical Engineering Degree at Universidad de Chile and a MSc in Space Science and Radio Astronomy at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Subsequently, he received his PhD from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in 2010, working on the chemical fingerprints of star-forming regions and active galaxies (https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/publications/chemical-fingerprints-of-star-forming-regions-and-active-galaxies%28116b82be-bff3-4b4c-ae97-d6d7ec15b6b7%29.html).
He is a former Humboldt Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut fö¼r Radioastronomie (MPIfR: http://www.mpifr.de), Bonn, Germany, and subsequent staff scientist at the same MPIfR before joining ESO/APEX. Besides his interest in the evolutionary connections and feedback effects between AGN and starburst activity (using mm and sub-mm observations and theoretical/MHD models), he is also deeply interested in studying the ambient conditions of HII and massive star-forming regions with multi-wavelength observations. He actively performs galactic and extragalactic Terahertz observations using the SOFIA/GREAT airborne observatory (https://www.dsi.uni-stuttgart.de/institut/ueberblick.en.html) in close collaboration with the MPIfR and the German Space Agency (DLR: http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10002/). He also collaborates in several research projects including the chemical effects of supernovae in their surrounding gas; shocks, PDR and XDR models, MHD simulations and 3D radiative transfer models of an AGN torus.

Scientific interests:

• AGN/Seyfert galaxies
• HII/star-forming regions
• PDR/XDR and 3D radiative transfer models

Oliver Pfuhl
(PAO/SCV)

Scientific Interests:

• The Galactic Center (star formation and dynamics close to the SMBH)
• Infrared/optical instrumentation
• Long baseline interferometry

Neil Phillips joined ESO in July 2011 as a Test Scientist at ALMA, where he commissions the antennas and receiver systems. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 2011, working on infrared and sub-millimetre surveys of circumstellar discs. He has previously worked on optical and radio instrumentation projects. His technical interests include far-IR to radio wavelength observing techniques and instrumentation, calibration, data reduction algorithms, astronomical databases and the Virtual Observatory, and generally tinkering with anything technical. His scientific interests revolve around circumstellar debris discs, with particular interest in statistically relating disc properties with stellar properties, and accurate stellar flux distribution modelling to improve photometric dust detection limits.

Emanuela Pompei is working as FORS instrument scientist at the Paranal La Silla Observatory. She obtained her PhD from University of Trieste in Italy in 1999 and joined ESO the same year. She has worked both on La Silla and on Paranal as Boller&Chivens, DFOSC, FEROS, EMMI and NTT instrument scientist and WFI and EFOSC2 support astronomer. Her research interests center on the dynamics and chemical evolution of galaxies and on compact groups of galaxies, as probes of the evolution of large scale structures.

Personal home page

David Rabanus works in the ALMA Observatory http://www.alma.cl in the Department of Engineering Services Group as Instrument Specialist. Earlier, he managed the Array Maintenance Group and Instrument Group. Before arriving to ALMA he worked at APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment http://www.apex-telescope-org, as Station Manager. Before arriving to Chile he participated in the development of the GREAT receiver, a collaboration between the Kö¶lner Observatorium fö¼r Sub-Millimeter-Astronomie (KOSMA http://www.ph1.uni-koeln.de), the Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy (MPIfR) and the Institute for Space Sensor Technology of the German Aerospace Center (DLR-WS) on a heterodyne receiver of SOFIA. Ground-based receiver deployment of the SMART receiver and servicing at the KOSMA telescope on Gornergrat, Switzerland. Deployment of the receiver CONDOR (1.3-1.5 THz) at the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX). Development and deployment of a 490/810 GHz dual frequency receiver for the NANTEN2 telescope, Pampa La Bola, Atacama, Chile. Application of new THz quantum cascade lasers as local oscillators for heterodyne observations on SOFIA. Dissertation in the Institute for Space Sensor Technology and of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin-Adlershof. Topic: 'Development of a Modular Stressed-Ge: Ga Photoconductor Focal Plane Array PrototypeÁ€˜. This is a far-infrared photoconductor array was developed for deployment on the US-German Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) and forms the long-wavelength detector system in the spectrometer 'AIRESÁ€˜ based at the NASA Ames Research Center, California, in the US.

Scientific interests:

• Solar System Sciences: Planetary Atmospheres
• Millimeter/submillimeter Technology Development
• Observatory Operations

Thomas Rivinius has studied at the University of Heidelberg, where he got his PhD in 1998. After three years of ESO fellowship in Garching he returned to Heidelberg to become "Privatdozent". Since 2005 he's back at ESO, this time in Chile as science operations support astronomer on Paranal at the VLTI. Currently, he's the intrument scientist for MIDI. His research focusses on hot stars and their circumstellar environments, covering stellar pulsation, hot star winds, magnetic O and B-type stars, and Be stars and their disks.

Personal home page

Eleonora Sani
(PAO/SCV)

Ivo Saviane has been in its position as La Silla Site Manager officially since October 2013. However, his history at ESO commenced about 12 years ago. That is when he first came to ESO, to join a Fellowship programme at La Silla that lasted three years from 2001 to 2003. Right after that he became an Operations Staff Astronomer at La Silla, starting a steady career closely related with the site. Among other positions at La Silla, he has been at various times Instrument Scientist of FEROS, TIMMI2, EMMI, and EFOSC2, and he became Head of Science Operations in 2008. After moving to Paranal as an Operations Staff Astronomer, he became Instrument Scientist of FORS2 and later KMOS.
Ivo obtained his Masters degree in Astronomy from the University of Padova in 1991 with work based on colour-magnitude diagrams of three Galactic globular clusters, under the supervision of Prof. M. Capaccioli and Dr. G. Piotto. He received his Ph.D. in Astronomy from the same university in 1997.

Fernando Selman's current observational research interests include studies of the nature of the stellar IMF, and the dynamics and binary content in 30 Doradus using SINFONI, and the physics of medusa galaxies studied with MUSE. On a larger scales he iinterested in the intergalactic light in clusters of galaxies. On a theoretical side he is interested in the dynamics of gravitational systems with particular attention to the phenomenon of dynamical friction. As an observatory astronomer, he has been instrument scientist for the Wide Field Imager (WFI) at La Silla, and HAWK-I, VIMOS, and OmegaCam at Paranal. He is currently the instrument scientist for MUSE at Paranal. He started his career as a physics student at the School of Engineering of Universidad de Chile subsequently obtaining his PhD at Caltech in 2004. During his strongly acausal career he was Fulbright Travel fellow, Carnegie-Chile Fellow, and Beatrice Watson Parrent postdoctoral fellow.

Personal home page

Alain Smette is a VLT operations Staff Astronomer. Following studentships at ESO-Garching and La Silla, he received his PhD from the Universite de Liege, Belgium, in 1994. He was a Post-Doc at Kapteyn Institute, Groningen, and a research associate first at the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, in the STIS team, then back in Liege. His research interests mainly include the study of absorption lines in the spectra of quasars and gamma-ray burst optical afterglows, gravitational lensing and AGN. He is the instrument scientist of CRIRES.

Jonathan Smoker
(PAO/SCV)

Jonathan Smoker is a VLT Operations Staff Astronomer and the instrument scientist for CRIRES (previously FLAMES and UVES). He obtained his PhD from Manchester University (Jodrell Bank), England in 1993 studying low surface brightness dwarf galaxies in HI and the optical, before moving on to be a computer systems administrator at the Royal Greenwich Observatory and IoA, Cambridge. After that came a 4-year stint as a postdoc at Queen's University, Belfast, Ireland, then 3 years at ESO Chile which he left in 2005. He is now back at the VLT, working on high velocity clouds, tiny-scale structure in the interstellar medium, the Magellanic system and some work on supernovae, B-type and Post-AGB stars.

Personal home page

Thomas Szeifert is support astronomer at the VLT since 1999. Before he was working for the FORS instrument consortium at the observatory in Heidelberg. He has been instrument scientist at Paranal for the FORS optical multi-mode instrument and the SINFONI near-IR adaptive optics integral field spectrograph. His primary fields of research are the study of long-term wind variability of Luminous Blue Variables and other massive hot stars and stellar abundance studies in the Galaxy and local group galaxies. He obtained his PhD in 1995 at the Heidelberg University for his work on Luminous Blue Variable Stars in the Magellanic clouds, M31 and M33.

Personal home page

Massimo Tarenghi

Karl Torstensson
(APEX/SCV)

Scientific interests:

• High-mass star formation
• ISM
• Centimetre, millimetre and submillimetre Astronomy
• Interferometry
• VLBI

Konrad Tristram
(PAO/SCV)

Konrad Tristram is an operations staff astronomer at Paranal. He received his PhD in 2007 from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where he started his investigation of active galactic nuclei (AGN) at highest angular resolutions. After his PhD he moved to Bonn becoming an interferometry specialist. He joined ESO in April 2014 in order to support the interferometric effort at Paranal. He continues working on the dust and gas surrounding the supermassive black holes in AGN. Driven by his science, he holds a special interest in high angular resolution imaging and spectroscopy as well as in infrared & submm interferometry. Since 2015, he is the instrument scientist of VISIR.

His research interests are:

• active galactic nuclei
• supermassive black holes
• nearby active galaxies
• very high angular resolution imaging and spectroscopy
• optical and infrared interferometry

Personal home page

Evolution of Galaxies and the ISM

Eric Villard
(JAO/SCV)

Eric Villard is a System Astronomer on ALMA. He joined ESO in January 2010, after obtaining his PhD at Service d'Aö©ronomie du CNRS (near Paris) in 2008. While at Service d'Aö©ronomie, he also worked on the science operations of the European Venus Express mission, in particular the SPICAV instrument. His main research interest is the study of planetary atmospheres at various wavelengths. Other research interests include astrometry, the study of comets, exoplanets and galaxy evolution (bars).

• Planetary atmospheres
• Exoplanets

Planets and Star Formation

Zahed Wahhaj
(PAO/SCV)

Joseph Anderson
(PAO/SCV)

Daniel Asmus is an ESO fellow with duties at Paranal observatory since August 2014. He is also the instrument fellow for VISIR. Daniel received his PhD in astrophysics at the university of Kiel, Germany, in 2012 in the accretion physics group of Wolfgang Duschl. Before, he was an ESO student in Chile between 2009 and 2011 working with Alain Smette. He studies nearby galaxies and their active galactic nuclei (AGN), mainly in the mid-infrared with ground-based high-angular resolution instruments like VLT/VISIR and VLTI/MIDI. Goal of these studies is to obtain a better understanding of the circumnuclear structures and processes, in particular dust emission and absorption.

Scientific interests:

• Mid-infrared observations
• Active galactic nuclei
• Solar System

Evolution of Galaxies and the ISM

Bruno Dias
(PAO/SCV)

Bruno Dias is an ESO fellow with duties in Paranal since July 2015. He is the instrument fellow of FORS2 and operates UT1, that includes FORS2, KMOS, and NACO. He received his PhD from IAG - Universidade de Sö¸o Paulo, in Brazil in 2014, with a prize of best thesis of the year from the same institute. During the PhD he was granted an ESO studentship for one year in Chile. Before coming back to ESO he was a post-doc at Durham University, UK. His main science interests involves stellar clusters and stellar populations to understand stellar and galaxy evolution in the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds. He has experience on spectroscopy and photometry that is applied to his work on FORS2. He is also a member of the VISTA VVV survey.

Scientific Interests:

• Star clusters in the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds 
• Dynamical interactions in the Magellanic Clouds 
• Multiple populations in globular clusters

Personal home page

Alexandre Gallenne
(PAO/SCV)

• High angular resolution techniques: long-baseline interferometry, Adaptive optics
• Cepheid stars: angular diameters, distances, binarity, circumstellar envelopes
• Extragalactic distance scale

Xavier Haubois
(PAO/SCV)

Xavier Haubois is an ESO fellow with duties at Paranal Observatory since October 2014. He got his PhD in 2009 at Observatoire de Paris that was focused on infrared interferometric imaging of evolved stars and the design phase of GRAVITY. After his thesis, he obtained a post-doctoral contract at the University of Sö¸o Paulo (IAG) to work on the modelling of circumstellar environments and at the University of Sydney to deepen his skills in optical interferometry. After one year of teaching and research at Observatoire de Paris in 2013, Xavier continues his works at ESO on evolved stars and to the forthcoming operation of GRAVITY.

His research interests are:

• Evolved stars
• The Galactic Center
• Be stars
• Optical Interferometry and high angular resolution imaging

Personal home page

Stellar Structure and Evolution

Yara Jaffe
(PAO/SCV)

Yara Jaffö© is a fellow at ESO with duties at Paranal. She obtained her PhD from the University of Nottingham in 2012, and held postdoctoral positions in Padova and Concepciö¨n before joining ESO. Her research mainly focuses on the effect of environment on galaxy formation and evolution. Her specific research interests include: gas stripping processes, the quenching of star formation in groups and clusters, and the formation of early-type galaxies.

Personal home page

Evelyn Johnston
(PAO/SCV)

Evelyn Johnston completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham, UK, in August 2014, and joined ESO as a fellow in September 2014 with duties at Paranal. Her research areas include the formation of counter-rotating stellar discs and the processes that suppress the star formation in spiral galaxies, thus leading to their transformation into lenticulars.

Personal home page

Tomasz Kaminski
(ALMA/SCV)

Jorge Lillo Box
(PAO/SCV)

Julien Milli
(PAO/SCV)

Adele Plunkett
(ALMA/SCV)

Adele Plunkett is an ESO fellow with duties at ALMA.  She earned her PhD from Yale University in USA in 2015.  Her research focuses on protostars in clustered star-forming regions, especially quantifying the feedback provided from molecular outflows in these environments.  She aims to use multi-wavelength observations -- including from interferometers and single dish telescopes -- in order to probe the range of physical scales, conditions, and kinematics important in a scenario for clustered star formation.  

Personal home page

Frederic Vogt
(PAO/SCV)

• Compact group of galaxies
• Gas flows, star formation, galaxy evolution
• Data visualization & integral field spectroscopy

Linda Watson
(ALMA/SCV)

Linda Watson is an ESO fellow with duties at ALMA since September 2014. She earned her PhD in astronomy from the Ohio State University in 2011 and then held a postdoc position with the Submillimeter Array group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Linda's primary research interests are the following:

• Star formation and the interstellar medium in nearby galaxies
• Connections between atomic gas, molecular gas, and star formation in bulgeless disk galaxies and galaxies with extended ultraviolet (XUV) disks
• Galaxy evolution, especially by secular processes

Personal home page

Evolution of Galaxies and the ISM

Bin Yang
(PAO/SCV)

Bin Yang joined ESO as a science fellow with duties at the VLT in November 2013. She received her PhD from the University of Hawaii in 2009, where she studied the physical properties of Solar System small bodies using various facilities atop Mauna Kea. Before coming to ESO, She was working as an Astrobiology fellow at the NASA Astrobiology institute in Hawaii. Her main interests include the primitive bodies of the Solar System, planet formation and Astrobiology.

Rebeca Aladro

Oscar Gonzalez

University of Edinburgh (4th year)

Stellar Structure and Evolution

Lizette Guzman-Ramirez

Andrö© Mueller

Karl Torstensson
(APEX/SCV)

Scientific interests:

• High-mass star formation
• ISM
• Centimetre, millimetre and submillimetre Astronomy
• Interferometry
• VLBI

Paul Elliott
(SCV)

From Exeter University, U.K.

Planets and star formation

Scientific interests:

• Pre-main sequence binaries
• Statistics of multiplicity within stellar populations
• Star formation

Ahmed Shokry Elshaer
(SCV)

PhD student from National Research Institute of Astronomy & Geophysics/NRIAG, Egypt.

Scientific interests:

• Stellar structure and evolution
• B/Be stars
• Photometric observations

Daniel M. Faes
(SCV)

Associated Post-Doc from the Brazilian program "Science without Borders" since December 2015. Advisor at ESO: Dr. Thomas Rivinius.

Scientific interests:

• Stellar astrophysics and circumstellar environment
• Astrophysical disks   
  
• B/Be stars
• Optical interferometry
• Radiative transfer in gaseous media
  
  Personal home page: http://j.mp/danmoser
  

Joö¸o Victor Sales Silva
(SCV)

Arthur Vigan
(PAO/SCV)

Arthur Vigan joined ESO as a VLT astronomer as one of the instrument scientists of SPHERE, which started operations on UT3 in 2015. He is an expert in high-contrast instrumentation and on direct imaging and spectroscopy of sub-stellar companions. Before joining ESO, he was a key member of the SPHERE consortium that designed and built this new instrument. As deputy instrument scientist of IRDIS since 2012, he has developed a deep understanding of this subsystem and of SPHERE in general. He is now a central member of the team that will exploit the 260 nights of guaranteed time, looking for new planets and disks around nearby young stars.

Scientific interests:

• High-contrast instrumentation 
• Direct imaging and spectroscopy of exoplanets
  

Callum Bellhouse
(LEA: G. Hau
S:
HI: Birmingham Univ)

Working on:

• Galaxies & their environment
  
• Jellyfish galaxies/RAM pressure stripping
  
•  MUSE/IFU

Scientific interests:

• Spectral analysis of Type II Supernovae
• Spectral diversity and correlations with photometric properties
• Metallicity estimation from SNII and SN Progenitors

Jorge H. C. Martins
(LEA: C. Melo
S: Pedro Figueira, Nuno Santos
HI: IA-Porto, Portugal)

Jorge Martins is a PhD Student from the Institute of Astronomy and Space Sciences (IA-Porto) currently on a 2-year studentship at ESO Chile since January 2015. He completed his undergrad and master studies in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (Portugal). His research interests lie mainly on the detection of reflected visible light from exoplanets using high resolution spectroscopy. He works under the supervision of Claudio Melo at ESO and of Pedro Figueira and Nuno Santos at IA-CAUP.

• Exoplanets
• Exoplanet atmospheres
• High resolution spectroscopy

Planets and Star Formation

Personal home page

Working on:

• Globular clusters
• Chemical evolution
• High-resolution spectroscopy

Matthew Taylor
(LEA: S. Mieske
S: Thomas Puzia
HI: PUC, Chile)