Stellar population synthesis has reached a high degree of sophistication that has been exploited to understand to a certain extent the mechanisms of formation...

CALIFA is the largest IFS survey ever performed up to date. Recently started, it will observe ~600 galaxies in the Local Universe with PPAK at the 3.5m of the...

We present recent theoretical and empirical results concerning the accuracy of Cepheid distance estimates based on optical and near-infrared (NIR) Period...

The flow of gas from the cosmic web into galaxies provides the necessary fuel for star formation and galaxy assembly. I will review our current knowledge about...

Cold gas streaming along the dark-matter filaments of the cosmic web is predicted to be the major provider of resources for disc buildup and star formation in...

1.- I will give an overview of WeCAPP (Wendelstein Calar Alto Pixellensing Project), a microlensing survey towards the Andromeda galaxy. WeCAPP monitored the...

Most massive galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres, and the masses of the black holes correlate with properties of the host-galaxy bulge...

Galaxy groups have an important role in the hierarchical assembly of structures in the Universe. Since galaxy groups are much more massive than galaxy-scale...

Understanding the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a key aspect to obtain a complete picture of galaxy formation and evolution. In the past years, we have...