Open positions
You'll find below some announcements of open positions. Obviously I welcome externally funded researchers (e.g. via Marie Curie fellowships, ERC grants, etc.). Don't hesitate to contact me to discuss details: Contact
PostDoctoral researcher
currently no open positions
PhD thesis
PhD thesis project on "Searches for counterparts to gravitational waves with H.E.S.S. and CTA"
The core of the proposed project will be H.E.S.S., currently the world’s most sensitive gamma-ray instrument, and CTA, the next generation, global high-energy gamma-ray observatory. We'll conduct real-time searches for transient high-energy gamma-ray emission linked to the detection of a gravitational wave (and other multi-messenger astrophysical transients like high-energy neutrinos, gamma-ray bursts, fast radio bursts, stellar/nova explosions, etc.). The combined observations will unequivocally prove the existence of a high-energy cosmic ray accelerator related to these violent multi-messenger phenomena and will allow to derive novel insights into the most violent explosion in the universe.
Short description: thesis_schussler_2023_hess_cta-gws.pdf
Extended description: thesis_schussler_2023_hess_cta-gws_full.pdf
Start date: September/October 2023 (earlier start possible)
Duration: 3 years
Funding: assured via the ANR project "Multi-messenger observations of the transient sky"
The core of the proposed project will be H.E.S.S., currently the world’s most sensitive gamma-ray instrument, and CTA, the next generation, global high-energy gamma-ray observatory. We'll conduct real-time searches for transient high-energy gamma-ray emission linked to the detection of a gravitational wave (and other multi-messenger astrophysical transients like high-energy neutrinos, gamma-ray bursts, fast radio bursts, stellar/nova explosions, etc.). The combined observations will unequivocally prove the existence of a high-energy cosmic ray accelerator related to these violent multi-messenger phenomena and will allow to derive novel insights into the most violent explosion in the universe.
Short description: thesis_schussler_2023_hess_cta-gws.pdf
Extended description: thesis_schussler_2023_hess_cta-gws_full.pdf
Start date: September/October 2023 (earlier start possible)
Duration: 3 years
Funding: assured via the ANR project "Multi-messenger observations of the transient sky"
Master thesis
Master level internship on "Astro-COLIBRI: a smartphone app for multimessenger astrophysics"
After three years of reflection and development, the "Astro-COLIBRI" application has just been launched. This digital interface, created by researchers at Irfu/DPhP, aims to make information on transient and multi-messenger phenomena easily accessible in real time. The need to react quickly to the most violent explosions in the universe and the large amount of information provided by the global network of observatories requires new approaches and new tools. Through "Astro-Colibri", several observatories now have the capacity to coordinate in monitoring and identifying the sources of physical phenomena in the transient sky.
The platform, which exists in the form of a smartphone application (IOS and Android) and a website, allows alerts to be put into their observational context by cross-referencing them with already known data. This saves researchers a considerable amount of time. In addition, the application anticipates the best possible observation period for a given observatory.
The aim of the internship to expand the functionalities of Astro-COLIBRI for multi-observatory follow-up campaigns. Especially the search for electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave events is challenging due to the large localization uncertainty areas provided by the GW observatories. During this internship we will adapt existing algorithms to derive an optimized observation pattern for each GW event and include them within the Astro-COLIBRI API. The resulting observing sequence will then be visualized in the web and smartphone apps to allow for an efficient organization of follow-up observations by a large range of instruments around the world. Extensive testing with real GW events detected over the last years, as well as simulated real-time alerts will precede the deployment of the new functionalities within Astro-COLIBRI (incl. submission to the Google and Apple apps stores).
The internship can be either standalone or as introduction to the PhD thesis project listed above.
Detailed information: internship_astro-colibri_2023.pdf
Start date: any time
Duration: minimum 3 months
After three years of reflection and development, the "Astro-COLIBRI" application has just been launched. This digital interface, created by researchers at Irfu/DPhP, aims to make information on transient and multi-messenger phenomena easily accessible in real time. The need to react quickly to the most violent explosions in the universe and the large amount of information provided by the global network of observatories requires new approaches and new tools. Through "Astro-Colibri", several observatories now have the capacity to coordinate in monitoring and identifying the sources of physical phenomena in the transient sky.
The platform, which exists in the form of a smartphone application (IOS and Android) and a website, allows alerts to be put into their observational context by cross-referencing them with already known data. This saves researchers a considerable amount of time. In addition, the application anticipates the best possible observation period for a given observatory.
The aim of the internship to expand the functionalities of Astro-COLIBRI for multi-observatory follow-up campaigns. Especially the search for electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave events is challenging due to the large localization uncertainty areas provided by the GW observatories. During this internship we will adapt existing algorithms to derive an optimized observation pattern for each GW event and include them within the Astro-COLIBRI API. The resulting observing sequence will then be visualized in the web and smartphone apps to allow for an efficient organization of follow-up observations by a large range of instruments around the world. Extensive testing with real GW events detected over the last years, as well as simulated real-time alerts will precede the deployment of the new functionalities within Astro-COLIBRI (incl. submission to the Google and Apple apps stores).
The internship can be either standalone or as introduction to the PhD thesis project listed above.
Detailed information: internship_astro-colibri_2023.pdf
Start date: any time
Duration: minimum 3 months
Current and past team members
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Valentin LefrancPostdoctoral researcher (since 2021)Valentin is leading the development of the Astro-COLIBRI transient tool. After a PhD thesis in our group at IRFU/CEA and Desy-Zeuthen (Berlin, Germany) he was developing Machine Learning tools as freelance software developer and for different start-ups.
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Atilla Kaan AlkanInternship M2 (2020) + PhD (since 2021)During his internship Atilla worked on natural language processing of reports of astrophysical observations. He implemented his own version of a Word2Vec vector representation of GCN circulars. Atilla also joined the Astro-COLIBRI development team and improved the assessment of the observability of a source for ground based observatories.
Atilla is doing a joint thesis with experts from the LISN institute at the Paris-Saclay university. He will be implementing an artificial intelligence based pipeline to process reports on astrophysical observations (e.g. ATELs, GCN circulars, TNS astronotes, etc.). Using tools for natural language processing (NLP) the results will help to improve the Astro-COLIBRI platform. |
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Patrick ReichherzerPhD (2019-2022) + collaborator (since 2022)Patrick did a joint PhD program between the university Paris-Saclay and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB). He started his PhD work at RUB under the supervision of Prof. J. Tjus on modelling of the diffusion of cosmic rays in highly turbulent magnetic environments. During his stay at IRFU in 2020 he worked mainly on studies of VHE emission of AGNs with H.E.S.S. and the Astro-COLIBRI transient tool. Patrick graduated from RUB and the university Paris-Saclay in 2022. Since then he is participating in the group activities as external collaborator.
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Jayson MourierMaster MIAGE alternance (since 2022)Jayson joined the group in 2022. He is alternating between his Master studies at the university of Nanterre ("MIAGE" program) and hands-on experience working on Astro-COLIBRI.
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Previous team members and students
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Anke YusafzaiInternship M2 (2019)During her internship Anke started to develop Astro-COLIBRI, a novel framework summarizing stable and (most importantly) transient phenomena. Using data from a number of catalogs and the VoEventDB, Astro-COLIBRI provides easy access to what is going on in a given patch of the sky and thus enables, facilitates and improves dedicated follow-up observations of multi-messenger transients.
Anke is currently pursuing a PhD at ECAP/University of Erlangen (Germany). |
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Halim AshkarInternship M2 (2018) + PhD (2018-2021)During his internship Halim analyzed the H.E.S.S. observations obtained after the detection of gravitational waves from the binary black hole merger GW170814. As expected, no high-energy gamma-ray emission was found and limits on the full localisation region of the event could be derived.
During his PhD Halim was focussing on the study of multi-messenger transients at very-high energies. He is mainly searching for VHE gamma-ray counterparts to gravitational waves and Fast Radio Bursts with H.E.S.S. and CTA. See for example here. Halim is currently working as postdoctoral research at LLR/Palaiseau. |
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Monica Seglar-ArroyoInternship M2 (2016) + PhD (2016-2019)During her internship Monica developed a detailed, time dependent model of the atmosphere above the H.E.S.S. observatory, which allowed to verify the model used in the H.E.S.S. simulations and estimate remaining systematic uncertainties.
During her PhD Monica was working on the study of multi-messenger transients, focussing mainly on searches for high-energy gamma-ray counterparts to gravitational waves with H.E.S.S./CTA and HAWC. She was also involved in the study of other transient phenomena like AGN flares with high-energy observatories. Monica spent one year at PennState (US) before finalizing her PhD at the Université Paris-Saclay in 2019. She is now a postdoctoral researcher in the Virgo collaboration at LAPP (Annecy, France). |
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Nicolas Renault-TinacciInternship M1 (2010)During his internship Nicolas developed a novel, Monte Carlo independent, method to estimate the angular resolution of the event reconstruction of the ANTARES neutrino telescope.
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Image credits: K. Kotera