João Oliveira successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on Friday 20th November 2020. The committee, presided by Prof. A. Botelho and composed by Profs. D. Astefanesi, M. Zilhão, M. Piedade Ramos, E. Radu and C. Herdeiro (advisor) unanimously approved the thesis entitled "Aspects of Einstein-Maxwell-scalar models: Solitons, Duality and Scalarisation". Congratulations João!
Abstract: The bright blazar OJ 287 is the best-known candidate for hosting a supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) in the present observable universe.
The 2020 FCT call for Scientific Research & Technological Development projects had 5847 applications, of which 3317 were considered eligible and 312 recommended for funding. In the Physical Sciences panel there were 139 applications; Gr@v's project, led by C.Herdeiro, a synergy between the different expertise of the group (strong gravity, astrophysics and high energy physics) was ranked first.
Pedro Cunha was one of the 7 selected researchers for a junior grant, nationwide, within 76 applicants in the Physical Sciences panel, in the third individual call for scientific employment stimulus, promoted by FCT. Pedro (re)joined our group as a post-doc in October 2020, after being a post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck institute for gravitational physics in Golm, Germany. Congratulations Pedro!
Nicolas Sanchis-Gual, the only member of the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra collaboration working in Portugal, officially joined Gr@v and our research unit CIDMA. After his Ph.D. from the University of Valencia, Nico worked as a postdoctoral researcher at CENTRA-IST. He is an expert on Numerical Relativity and Gravitational Waves from dynamical binaries. Welcome Nico!
C. Herdeiro delivered an invited 5 lectures mini-course for Beijing Normal University on "Asymptotically flat black holes with hair in D=4", from October 13 to 27. The host was Professor Hongbao Zhang.
Our group coordinated the "Numerical Relativity and High Energy Physics" IRSES network (2012-2015). Here is a list of the global network meetings organized: