Gr@v is a team of researchers, based at the Mathematics and Physics Department of Aveiro University, Portugal, working on strong gravity and high energy physics. The group was established in 2010. In January 2015 Gr@v integrated the FCT funded CIDMA research unit (UIDB/04106/2020 and UIDP/04106/2020), as the Gravitational Geometry and Dynamics research group. In January 2025 colleagues from the U. Algarve joined CIDMA and the group.
Gr@v PhD student Manuel Mariano is visiting Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, US, for a month. There he presented a seminar entitled “There and back again: outspiralling motion in non-Kerr compact objects”.
Romain Gervalle (Ph.D. U. Tours, France, 2025) and TianXiang Ma (M.Sc, Lanzhou U., China, 2024) have joined our group in October 2025. Ana Bokulic (Ph.D. U. Zagreb, Croatia, 2024), already a group member, also renewed her group membership into 2026. Great to have you in the group!
On Oct. 22nd 2025 we had the visit of João Dinis Álvares, who completed his M.Sc. at IST-Lisbon. João gave an interesting talk on the evolution of scalar fields around black holes and also shared with us that he decided to study physics after an outreach talk by Gr@v members, in Braga, back in 2017. Thank you João, for the kind words and all the best for your Ph.D. abroad!
On Thursday Oct 23rd, CERN organizes a topical meeting on "New Bosons from Astrophysical sources @ LHC: the case of boson stars". C. Herdeiro is one of the invited speakers.
Last Tuesday we bid a heartfelt farewell to our colleague and friend Mercè Guerrero, who is moving on to a new position at the Institute of Physics, University of Tartu.
We are very grateful for the positive impact Mercè has had on our team over these past couple of years. We will miss her greatly and wish her success and happiness on the (cold!) journey ahead!
Two 3-month grants for M.Sc. holders are open within the project 2024.05617.CERN, "Towards precision tests of ultralight dark matter with imaging and gravitational waves". Applications should be submitted between 13 and 24 October 2025. More info in the attached files and the Euraxess site.
In the last year three Gr@v members obtained faculty positions (as Assistant Professors) in Portuguese Universities: António Morais (Physics Dept., U. Minho), Miguel Zilhão (Physics Dept., U. Aveiro), Pedro Cunha (Mathematics Dept., U. Aveiro). Congratulations to António, Miguel and Pedro for this great achievement!
The annual global study led by John Ioannidis (Stanford University, USA), based on Elsevier’s Scopus citation data for 2024, ranked the world’s most influential scientists. The list includes 3 from Gr@v: P. Cunha, C. Herdeiro and E. Radu. See here the U. Aveiro coverage.
The VII Amazonian Symposium in Physics took place in the week of Sep. 23rd 2025. Another stimulating meeting with great talks and scientific interaction. Thank you to all participants and Prof. Luis Crispino for his leadership.
Listen here to the contribution of C. Herdeiro to the spanish podcast "Oscilador Armónico", chating with Isabel Cordero Carrión and António Rivera Nebot about black holes and exotic compact objects (in spanish).