The project has recruited two early stage researchers (ESR) for 36 months. Each participating researcher is enrolled in a doctoral programme and will spend at least 50% of their time in the non-academic sector.
The two ESRs will be located at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds, UK, for the first 9 months. They will then work in industry at ISDEFE/ESAC in Madrid, Spain, for 18 months. The ESRs are scheduled to return to the UK in Leeds for the last 9 months, to carry out the final analysis and their thesis write-up.
The ESRs will be jointly supervised by Prof. R Oudmaijer (University of Leeds – academic) and Dr. D Baines (ISDEFE – industry). Each ESR will also be allocated a mentor who will act as an independent point of contact and support.
Miguel Vioque
My name is Miguel Vioque, I am doing my Ph.D. on the study of Herbig Ae/Be stars under the supervision of Professor Rene Oudmaijer and Dr. Deborah Baines.
I was born in Sevilla, Spain and since I was little I wanted to research in astrophysics. I finished in 2016 my Master in Theoretical Physics, specializing in Astrophysics and Cosmology at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (UAM, Madrid, Spain). After that, I was accepted in this twin site PhD at Leeds, where I am currently living, and the ISDEFE company at Madrid.
My research topic is the study of star formation by means of the Gaia satellite and Machine Learning techniques. In addition, I use spectroscopic optical data to study the properties of young stars in detail.
Alice Perez
My name is Alice G. Pérez B. I was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1988. I am currently doing my PhD in Astrophysics under the supervision of Professor Rene Oudmaijer (University of Leeds, UK) and Dr. Deborah Baines (ISDEFE, Spain), where the research topic is the clustering properties of intermediate mass young stars, such as Herbig Ae/Be stars.
My interest in Astrophysics started during my degree course in Physics at the Universidad de Oriente (UDO, Cumaná – Venezuela). As part of my studies, I took courses in Astrophysics in the Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomía (CIDA, Merida – Venezuela) related with the star formation and evolution and this became the topic of my undergraduate dissertation. I continued to develop this interest by completing a Master degree in Fundamental Physics at the Universidad de Los Andes (ULA, Mérida – Venezuela) in 2016 where the main topic was the star formation. After this, I was accepted to join in this PhD program, where I will split my time between the University of Leeds and the ISDEFE.
The aim of my PhD project is to assess the existence of clusters around previously known and newly discovered Herbig Ae/Be stars. This project is part of an important bigger project, which offers me lots of opportunities to continue working in the field of astronomy. Hopefully, in the future, I will be able to obtain a post-doctoral position and continue doing research in Astrophysics.