The IAC has been chosen by the Jesús Serra Foundation to participate in its “Visiting Researchers Programme”. On 15 December 2022 the Agreement with the Jesús Serra Foundation for collaboration in the "Jesús Serra Foundation - Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias" visiting researcher programme was published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) no. 300. This agreement involves the creation of a joint programme between the two entities for the period 2023-2025 with the aim of attracting visiting professors and researchers of outstanding international prestige to carry out short stays of one to three months at the IAC with the objective, on the one hand, of deepening the scientific relationship between the host research group and the visiting researcher's centre and, on the other, of initiating possible lines of joint action aimed at generating new scientific interests.
In April 2023 an Addendum was made to modify the Agreement between the FJS and the IAC to include high-profile engineers as part of the visiting researcher programme.
Each year, the programme supports stay of one - three months at the IAC for visiting professors, researchers of international prestige, and high-profile engineers.
Within the framework of this mobility programme, the Severo Ochoa Coordination Committee (CCSO), in charge of the coordination, management and monitoring of the aforementioned agreement, proposed to the FJS a list of possible visiting researchers / professors / engineers for the year 2023, which was approved and has been implemented.
The funding scheme offered by the Jesus Serra Foundation consists of: maximum funding of 3000 euros /month. This scheme will accommodate to the standard rules of the IAC for "Bolsas de Viaje para Visitantes". In any case diets to be claimed shall refer to those in force in national territory according to Royal Decree 462/2002. According to this Royal Decree, the visiting researcher with a longer stay of one month, could be reimbursed with up to 80% of the maximum per diem, i.e 2400 €/month for accommodation & subsistence, not being necessary invoices related to such concepts.
Since the FJS-IAC collaboration began in 2014, a total of 44 scientists have already participated in this programme.
Researchers who have visited the IAC under this programme -or will visit it in the near future- are listed below:
Dr. Natalia Shchukina is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU) and a senior scientist at the Department of Solar Physics of the Main Astronomical Observatory of NASU. Her research interests cover several areas of astrophysics, such as multilevel radiative transfer, solar and stellar spectropolarimetry, solar magnetism
Dr. Davide Massari's research focuses on the formation and evolution of the Milky Way using stars and star clusters as tracers. Recently, he has been one of the main contributors to the revolution in this field, triggered by the Gaia mission, as he has observationally discovered the "Kraken" merging event (Massari et al. 2019) and contributed to
Dr. Julian Sitarek is a senior researcher at the University of Lodz, Poland. He received his PhD in 2011 and habilitation in 2016. He completed his PhD studies with a fellowship (2007-2010) at the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany. Between 2011 and 2014, Dr. Sitarek completed a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral stay at the Institut
Dr. Noelia Martínez did her PhD thesis as a resident at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) with the topic "Pioneering use of an Adaptive Optics plenoptic system for free-space communications", graduating in 2019. Previously, she worked as an electronic engineer at the European Space Agency (ESO) and at the IAC (2014-2016). After three
Dr. José Antonio De Diego Onsurbe was born in Girona in 1960 and is of Spanish and Mexican nationality. He obtained his PhD from the University of La Laguna in 1994, with the qualification of Cum Laude. Between 1989 and 1994 he worked at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in various positions: scientific collaborator, resident astrophysicist
Dr. Rogério Riffel received his PhD in 2008 at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). He was the first fellow of the Programa Nacional de Pós Doutorado da CAPES (PNPD/CAPES) at the Institute of Physics of UFRGS. This programme aims to promote high-level studies and maintain high-profile researchers in Brazil. During his stay as a PNPD
