Dr. Claudio Grillo becomes new Research Fellow at the Cluster

On 1 March 2010 the astrophysicist Dr. Claudio Grillo joined the Excellence Cluster Universe as a Research Fellow. He will be part of Research Area E, which studies the dark components of the Universe.

For the last one and a half years, Claudio Grillo was part of the Optical and Interpretative Astronomy Group at the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik (MPE). His research focuses on strong gravitational lensing and observational cosmology in galaxies and clusters of galaxies. He is particularly interested in exploring the dark matter distribution in these astronomical objects, as well as the cosmological applications of gravitational lensing. This work is essentially done in the optical regime, with extensive use of the images from the Hubble Space Telescope and measurements from some ground based telescopes, among them the ESO telescopes.

To become part of the Excellence Cluster Universe was an easy decision for Claudio Grillo: “The Cluster’s Fellowship program offers to young scientists an almost unique opportunity to work independently, but in close contact with institutes where people make a great effort to try to understand our Universe a little bit better”.