Cosmology News & Events

C. Herdeiro visited Hunan Normal University for two weeks in August-September 2026, where he gave a lecture course on Gravitating Solitons and Hairy Black holes. During the visit it was also possible to interact with collegues from Jianxi Normal University. Many thanks to Mengjie Wang and the whole group at HNU, led by Prof. Jiliang Jing, as well as to Hyat Huang and the whole group in JNU, for a wonderful hosting and great scientific interactions in Changsha and Nanchang.

Gr@v students M. Brito, J. Ferreira and M. Mariano were amongst the participants of the New Frontiers in Strong Gravity meeting in Benasque, in July 2026. 

João Novo successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis with title Light rings, shadows and geodesic structure
of four and five dimensional spacetimes on July 27th 2026. The Ph.D. committe was composed by  Astrid Eichhorn, Volker Perlick, Petya Georgieva, António Morais, Pedro Cunha (co-advisor) and João Matias (president). The thesis was advised by C. Herdeiro. Congratulations João!  

Member of Gr@v H. Olivares participated at the Spanish and Portuguese Relativity Meeting 2026, held in Murcia, Spain, to deliver an invited talk on simulating and observing black hole mimickers.

We got together on May 20th 2026 at Etevaldo's favourite restaurant in Aveiro (O Telheiro), to celebrate his 4.5 years in Gr@v. In the same day we had an excellent seminar from Hryhorii Ovcharenko, visiting from Prague. Etevaldo is now starting a post-doctoral position in Brazil. Many thanks, Etevaldo, for being with us. See you soon!

In early May 2026 we received the visits of our collaborators Nico Sanchis Gual, Isa Cordero, Gabriele Palloni, Claudio Lazarte (Valencia, Spain), members of the NewFunFiCO network, as well as Carolina Benone (UFPA, Brazil) and Carlos Joaquin (UNAM, Mexico), who joined us to celebrate the successful Ph.D. exam of Etevaldo Costa. 

Etevaldo Costa successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis with title "Bosonic exotic compact objects: construction and physical properties". The thesis was supervised by C. Herdeiro and E. Radu and the committee included Eric Gourgoulhon, Daniela Doneva and Carolina Benone as examiners. Congratulations Etevaldo!

In April 2026 we received the visits of Maryem Jemri (Rabat) and Justin Feng (Prague). Thank you for your seminars and the great scientific interactions!

Geometric Cosmology—and in particular Geometric Inflation (GI)—provides a higher-curvature mechanism capable of producing an accelerated expansion in the early Universe without invoking an inflaton in its minimal realization.

Gr@v is hosting the visits of Yasha Shnir, long time group collaborator, under an FCT mobility grant, and Mario Luciano Navarro, Ph.D. student from Valencia in the spring 2026. In the photo Yasha and Mario enjoy a bit of sunshine after the weekly group lunch.