Professor Cristina C. Popescu
Cristina is research active within the area of astrophysics and is a member of the Extragalactic Astrophysics Research Group. Cristina Popescu leads the Interstellar Medium Group, which investigates the formation and evolution of galaxies by studying the detailed physical processes that take place in these complex systems related to the interaction of radiation with dust, gas and cosmic rays. Currently Cristina is teaching in the Physics and Astrophysics team. She also taught in the maths team and for the distant learning courses.
Cristina is a Professor of Astrophysics in the UCLan's Jeremiah Horrocks Institute. She serves as Research Degrees Tutor and is the PI of the STFC studentship grants. Cristina is a member of UCLan's Research Degrees Board. She is Director of Studies for MSc and PhD students and supervisor of undergraduate astrophysics projects. Cristina is the President of the International Astronomical Union's Commission J1. She is a referee for all major peer reviewed journals in the field: Astronomy & Astrophysics, Astronomical Journal, Astrophysical Journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, Advances in Space Research.
Cristina Popescu has pioneered and developed the field of self-consistent modelling of the spectral energy distribution of galaxies. Her models encapsulate the fundamental physical processes responsible for the distribution of stars, gas and dust in galaxies. She has been at the forefront of interfacing the models she developed to large observational databases. This has allowed her to address, and answer, some of the biggest questions related to how galaxies form and evolve. Cristina wrote over 200 papers with over 10000 citations and has an h-index of 55. For a full list of publications see here.
Cristina Popescu was in the SOC of “The GALEX Fest - Exploring the UV Universe”, 4-7 Sept. 2012, Pasadena, California, USA. She was a panel member for the conference summary of the IAU meeting “Star formation indicators across the electromagnetic spectrum”, 27-30 August 2012, Beijing, China Cristina Popescu was the proposer and chair (jointly with Dr. R. Tuffs from the MPI Kernphysik) of the Scientific Organising Committee (SOC) of the International Astronomical Union Symposium 284, “The Spectral Energy Distribution of Galaxies”, held between 5-12 of September 2011 at UCLan. She was the co-chair of the SOC of the international conference “Hunting for the Dark: The Hidden Side of Galaxy Formation”, 19-23 October 2009, Malta and the co-chair of the SOC of the international workshop “The Spectral Energy Distribution of Gas-Rich Galaxies: Confronting Models with Data”, 4-8 October 2004, Heidelberg, Germany. Cristina is not only a researcher, but also a teacher, a lecturer and a communicator of knowledge. Whether she taught astrophysics, physics or maths courses, whether for on-campus or distant learning students, whether for UCLan students or students at international prestigious research schools, her goal is to make an outstanding contribution to the enhancement of student learning. In her present position within the International Astronomical Union she now has the possibility to influence the formation of a new generation of graduate students at the international level. She gives recommendations for the selection of the IAU prize for the best PhD thesis.
- PhD, Naturwissenschaften (Science), University of Heidelberg, 1996
- MSc, Physics, University of Bucharest, 1990
- Diploma (equivalent BSc), Physics, University of Bucharest, 1989
- Leverhulme Trust research grant award 2014
- Sasakawa foundation award 2011
- Centenary Jubileum Medal of the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy 2008
- the Livesey award of the University of Central Lancashire, 2007
- Otto-Hahn Prize of the Max Planck Society in 1997
- extragalactic astrophysics
- galaxy formation and evolution
- interstellar medium
- radiative transfer models
- the spectral energy distribution of galaxies
- nearby galaxies
- the Milky Way
- interstellar and intergalactic dust
- cosmic rays
- infrared astrophysics
- high energy astrophysics
- President of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Inter-Division D-G-H-J Commission J1
- Steering Committee Member of IAU Division J Galaxies and Cosmology
- Past Vice-President of Commission J1 of the International Astronomical Union (IAU)
- Past Co-Chair of IAU Inter-Commission B2-J1 WG From Databases to Spectral Energy Distributions (DB2SED)
- Past Co-Chair of IAU Inter-Division D-G-H-J Commission WG Reference Library of Galaxy Spectral Energy Distributions (RELIGAS)
- Member of the IAU
- Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS)
- Fellow of the European Astronomical Society (EAS)
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Past member of the American Astronomical Society
- Past member of the German Astronomical Society
- Senior Visiting Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg, Germany
- Research group leader at the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest
- Past Visiting Senior Scientist at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, California
Prof. Popescu's research aims at modelling emission mechanisms in galaxies ranging from the low energy submillimeter and infrared emission to the optical and ultraviolet emission, and up to very high energy gamma-ray photons. It links together the infrared, optical and ultraviolet astrophysics to the rapidly expanding field of high energy astrophysics and astro-particle physics, operating at the interface between observation and theory. On the observational side, a key feature of this research is to empirically determine physical attributes of galaxies such as star-formation rates, star-formation histories, and gas and dust content using a powerful new multiwavelength approach exploiting the hitherto unprecedented range of spaceborne and ground-based observatories available to the present-day astronomical community. On the theoretical side, the ultimate goal is to explain these empirically determined physical attributes in terms of physical processes controlling the formation and evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. A key goal is to identify the processes governing how these systems have accreted their gas over cosmic time from the intergalactic medium contained within the evolving dark matter structure of the Universe. This ultimately addresses the fundamental issue of how the baryons are related to dark matter, what this implies about the nature of dark matter, as well as what effect the galaxies have on their environment, and the effect the environment has on galaxies. The research also addresses physical processes occurring on smaller scales in the interstellar medium inside galaxies which shapes the panchromatic emission of galaxies. Examples are the formation and destruction of dust and the injection and propagation of cosmic rays.
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- Galactic and Extragalactic astrophysics
- Max Planck grants to support scientific visits at MPIK, Heidelberg, in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2020
- £ 150,000 Leverhulme Trust Project Grant for “The high and low energy views of the Milky Way”, 2014
- £ 10,000 sabbatical award, 2013
- Max Planck grant to support my sabbatical visit at MPIK, 2013
- EUR 19000 IAU grant to support participants at the IAU Symp. 284, “The spec-tral energy distribution of galaxies”, 2011
- £ 3000 from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, 2011
- £ 300,000 STFC grant for “Dust physics and the formation and evolution of galaxies” (2009)
- $ 40,000 NASA support for GALEX GO program GI5 - 048, “GALEX-GAMA: UV/optical/near-IR/Far-IR/Radio observations of 100K galaxies” (2008)
- £ 10,000 Livesey grant awarded to myself, Dr. V. Debattista, Dr. A. Sansom and Dr. P. Sanchez-Blazquez to support visiting collaborators at UCLan (2007)
Telephone:+44 (0)1772893551
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