News Overview

The Eu­ro­pean Re­search Council (ERC) has awarded Annalisa Pillepich, re­search group leader at Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), one of the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grants. In her project COSMIC-KEY, Pillepich and her colleagues will be developing the next generation of simulations of galaxies and of the universe as a whole – a key to understanding obser­vational data that is set to become available over the next years.

The objective of COSMIC-KEY is to create the most realistic suites of simu­lations yet of galaxy formation and its consequences for cosmic evolution and cosmic structures. This includes, among many other physical phenomena, the influence of the central black holes not only on the rate of star formation in galaxies but, crucially, on the physical properties of the gas that surrounds galaxies and permeates dark-matter halos. The ultimate goal is to use such numerical and theo­re­ti­cal models to fit data of the X-ray and Sunyaev–Zel'dovich signatures of groups and clusters of galaxies and in turn to infer fundamental cosmological parameters that describe the functioning of the Universe.

With a total amount of 2 million euros, the consolidator grant will be used to finance 4 post-doctoral positions and 2 PhD students at MPIA over the coming five years.

• Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) - Press Release
• Eu­ro­pean Re­search Council - Press Release
• Annalisa Pillepich: Galaxies and Cosmology Theory Group