Within the reorganization of the Portuguese research units promoted by FCT, Gr@v will become part, from Jan 2015, of the Centre for Research and Development in Mathematics and Applications (CIDMA), a research unit based at the University of Aveiro. Gr@v will integrate CIDMA as a new research group -- Gravitational Geometry and Dynamics. Thank you I3N and in particular the I3N-Aveiro coordinator, Armando Neves, for all the support to our group over the past four years.
This is therefore a good time to review Gr@v's first four years of activity and track record.
The gravitation group at the University of Aveiro was created in the fall 2010 when Carlos Herdeiro integrated the Physics department at Aveiro University. Joining efforts with the already existing astrophysics group led by Alexandre Correia, Gr@v was developed as research group on gravitational physics and mathematics, both relativistic and non-relativistic, with applications to astrophysics, cosmology, high-energy physics and mathematical physics.
In little over four years (Oct 2010-Dec 2014), Gr@v grew considerably and gained national and international notoriety:
a) with over 100 publications in its research areas, including (detailed list here)
* 83 papers published or accepted in the following international journals with refereeing
- Astronomy and Astrophysics, A&A, IF: 4.479 (13 articles + 2 letters)
- Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, IF: 2.084 (2)
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, CQG, IF: 3.103 (1)
- General Relativity and Gravitation, GRG, IF: 1.725 (2)
- Icarus, IF: 2.840 (1)
- International Journal of Astrobiology, IF: 0.826 (1)
- International Journal of Modern Physics A, IJMPA, IF: 1.086 (1)
- International Journal of Modern Physics D, IJMPD, IF: 1.420 (1)
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, JCAP, IF: 5.877 (4)
- Journal of High Energy Physics, JHEP, IF: 6.220 (9)
- Journal of Mathematical Physics, JMP, IF: 1.176 (1)
- Living Reviews in Relativity, LRR, IF: 16.526 (1)
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, MNRAS, IF: 5.226 (5)
- Nature Geoscience, IF: 11.668 (1)
- Physical Review D, PRD, IF: 4.864 (28)
- Physical Review Letters, PRL, IF: 7.728 (2)
- Physics Letters B, PLB, IF: 6.019 (3)
- The Astrophysical Journal, ApJ, IF: 6.280 (2)
- The Astrophysical Journal Letters, ApJ L, IF: 5.602 (2)
- The European Physical Journal C, EPJ C, IF: 5.436 (1)
(IF= 2013 Journal Impact Factor)
* 2 books as editors;
* 18 contributions to published proceedings of international conferences;
b) integrating a growing number of members (detailed list here):
* 15 researchers with a Ph.D. (10 at present),
* 7 Ph.D. students (6 at present),
* M.Sc. and undergraduate students in research projects.
* These researchers have been funded by FCT and European funds, but also by other national funding agencies, namely from Brazil and Mexico;
* Three of the post-docs/researchers which have integrated Gr@v have moved to permanent positions in other Universities:
- Helena Morais is now Professor at Department of Statistics, Applied Mathematics and Computation, UNESP, Rio Claro, Brazil;
- Cristian Giuppone is now a Tenured Researcher at Argentinian National Council for Scientific and Technical Research - CONICET;
- Juan Carlos Degollado is now assistant professor at the University of Guadalajara (Mexico).
c) attracting funds from different sources, namely leading FCT, FCT/CERN and Gulbenkian funded projects as well as coordinating one international network funded by the European Union as a Marie Curie project (more details here);
d) organizing four international meetings/workshops at Aveiro University, with a total participation of over 200 researchers:
e) organizing a weekly program of seminars and journal clubs that has brough to Aveiro over 70 speakers from other Universities (details here).
f) being awarded some distinctions:
* An honorable mention in the GRF essay competion for C. Herdeiro and E. Radu for their work on hairy black holes (details);
* A Gulbenkian prize for Ph.D. student Flávio Coelho for his Ph.D. project (details);
* A Chinese government prize for Ph.D. student Mengjie Wang for his Ph.D. work (details).
g) getting involved in outreach and science popularization. Here are some examples:
* Talk by J. Rosa: "Um bosão chamado Higgs" in the series of outreach talks "Odisseia pela Física";
* TEDx talk by C. Herdeiro: "Os sussurros do espaço-tempo", at TEDx Aveiro (2012);
* C. Herdeiro's interview to Porto Canal on "black holes" (2014);
* Contribution to the "Geração 2020" TV show on the topic "The Universe" (2013);
* Chat between a writer and a physicist about "time": "Haviamos de falar de tempo", mediated by writer/scientist Nuno Camarneiro.
Our committment for the future is to continue to develop our research area, increasing its visibility as well as that of Aveiro University, both nationally and internationally, as a reference institution in this exciting field of research.