My Research

I am currently Research Professor at the UW Astronomy Department. My main research field is cosmic structure formation. Using computer simulations I try to understand how Galaxies, Super Massive Black Holes and Galaxy Clusters formed out of Dark matter, Baryons, Dark Energy ...and a lot of physics. It is a rapidly changing, fascinating field, that rewards a vivid imagination, attention to details and collaborative work. Plus, you get to play with big computers and Galaxies are pretty to look at. What's not to like? Here is a list of topics and relative papers that I am interested in these days:

My Long Term Collaborators

I am part of an international collaboration that started in the mid 90ies, the: N-Body Shop..

News&Recent Papers

2012 ADS Paper of the Year: Solving the Cusp-Core Problem in Dwarf Galaxies (JAN 2013).

In this paper we show how SN generated outflows flatten the DM profile at the center of dwarf galaxies MNRAS 2012,422 123 Link.…

The Formation of a Realistic Disk Galaxy (DEC 2012)

In collaboration with Prof. Alyson Brooks and Prof. Susan Kassin (STScI) we simulated one of the most sophisticated models of a Milky Way Galaxy. This animation was used for a NASA press release and has more than 300k hits on YouTube. Link.…

Comparing Theory with Observations: THINGS & CDM dwarfs.

Solving the core/cusps discrepancy: real and simulated CDM dwarfs have the same cored DM distribution. This is a detailed comparison with galaxies from the THINGS survey. Link.…

Useful Links