Research in Astrophysics
en español
I started my scientific career as a PhD student at IAC (Tenerife) vinculated to
SWIRE, an international consortium
involving scientists and students from more than 15 european and american institutions and led by
Carol J. Lonsdale and Michael Rowan-Robinson.
SWIRE obtained the largest of all Spitzer
Legacy programs, an image survey in the 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, 8.0, 24, 70 and 160 μm bands covering 49 square
degrees in six extragalactic fields.
SWIRE data were very useful for my M.S. project, in which I
explore the use of near- and mid-infrared photometry to improve the accuracy of optical photometric redshifts.
ELAIS-IRS was a follow up with Spitzer of one of the largest extragalactic surveys performed with ISO: the ELAIS survey.
Lead by my PhD advisor, Dr. Ismael Pérez Fournon, ELAIS-IRS was one of the longest open time Spitzer spectroscopic programs
devoted to intermediate redshift galaxies. We observed 70 luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies at
0.5 < z < 3, with full spectral coverage between 5 and 40 microns.
As co-PI of the project, I participated in the selection of targets and writing of the observing proposal,
and later I was in charge of the processing and analysis of the spectroscopic data. This data are the core of my
PhD Thesis (PDF, spanish) regarding the link between
AGN activity and star formation in ultraluminous infrared galaxies.
In May 2009 I was hired by the DAMIR group at CSIC (led by Luis Colina and Santiago Arribas) to
become a member of the MIRI
Test Team, a group of scientists and engineers led by Alistair Wright and responsible for the ground verification
of MIRI, the infrared cammera and spectrograph developed by the European Space Agency that will fly in the upcoming
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
My duties within the test team include the design and execution of tests related to the photometric stability and out of band
transmission of MIRI's MRS multiobject spectrograph.
Since early 2010 I am leader of the ATLAS-IRS project, a private effort aimed at producing the largest public database of infrared spectra from active and starburst galaxies. The spectra in ATLAS-IRS come from spectroscopic observations with the IRS spectrograph onboard Spitzer, published in the literature or contributed by colaborators. We also provide with a database of ancillary data (redshifts, photometry, spectral measurements) for the galaxies in the sample. In February 2011 we launched the project's website and published a paper in MNRAS discussing the first 750 spectra. Currently the database contains more than 1000 galaxies and is still growing.