Institute Reports

At its Annual Meeting 2020, the German Astronomical Society/Astronomische Gesellschaft (AG) awarded Paola Pinilla from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) the prestigious Ludwig-Biermann-Prize.  Anna-Christina Eilers - also at MPIA until 2020, now as a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - received the AG's Doctoral Prize, a further award for her PhD-thesis. [more]

Maria Bergemann, scientist in the MPIA Department “Galaxies and Cosmology”, has been awarded with 1.37 Mio EURO by an ERC Starting Grant scheme. The grant will support two postdocs and two PhD students over the next 5 years. The main goal of the project is to understand the cosmic origins of elements heavier than iron and the role of extreme objects in the evolution of our Milky Way Galaxy. Observations with the 4MOST (www.4most.eu) facility, in which MPIA is involved, will play a special role in the project. [more]

Richard Anderson, currently postdoctoral research fellow at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), has been awarded with 1.84 Mio EURO by an ERC Starting Grant scheme. In February 2021 he will be joining MPIA as a group leader in the “Galaxies and Cosmology Department”.  The ERC-group which will consist of Anderson as group leader, one postdoctoral researcher, and two PhD students, will focus on high precision measurements of the Universe's current expansion rate. [more]

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has announced that it is granting the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award 2020 to eight international research talents. One award winner is Gregory Maurice Green from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg. [more]

On August 8, 2020, Thorsten Neckel has passed away at the age of 83 years. He was not only one of the first scientific employees at MPIA, but also did pioneering work in the search for a telescope site for one of the institute's observatories in the southern hemisphere. [more]