Cluster member Elisa Resconi receives Heisenberg Professorship

The Cluster scientist Dr. Elisa Resconi receives a Heisenberg Professorship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) at the Technische Universität München. This professorship will focus on neutrino astronomy, a relatively new branch of astronomy which observes neutrinos as well as higher energetic sources like active galactic nuclei (AGN) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Elisa Resconi is only the second female physicist in Germany to receive a Heisenberg Professorship.

Scientists can apply for a Heisenberg Professorship after a successful appointment procedure at a German University. The admitting University must create a new position and demonstrate to the DFG that a new research focus will be established through this Heisenberg Professorship. Elisa Resconi’s research focus has been for several years the IceCube experiment, a neutrino telescope at the South Pole, which aims to detect the sources of cosmic radiation and the unknown dark matter.

Elisa Resconi received her PhD in 2001 in the field of astro-particle physics at the University of Genova, where she participated in the international solar neutrino experiment Borexino. Between 2005 and 2010 she led an Emmy-Noether Research Group of the DFG at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, exploring high energy neutrinos with the help of the IceCube Experiment. Since 2011 Elisa has been continuing her research within the Excellence Cluster Universe. “The Heisenberg Professorship offers a great opportunity to continue my work within the IceCube Collaboration in an independent way at TUM and to combine my scientific work with my family”, Elisa says. For the next five years the professorship will be financed by the DFG.

For further information regarding a Heisenberg Professorship please contact
Paul Heuermann
email: paul.heuermann@dfg.de