Projects with external funding
This is a group grant (Millennium Nucleus) awarded by the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development (ANID). This 3+3 year project is led by Dr. Neil Nagar at the University of Concepción and we were recently awarded the +3 year extension where I will be acting as alternate director. One of the goals of this extension is to search for and image (!) supermassive black hole binaries using the Event Horizon Telescope, and use numerical simulations of accretion flows to model them. See more details here or follow us in social media.
This is a larger group grant (Millennium Institute) awarded by the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) lasting 10+ years. I was recently invited to join the current extension (to be awarded soon) as one of the main researchers. The ALeRCE broker, chosen as one of the official brokers of the future Vera Rubin LSST, is a flagship project of MAS. See more details here or follow us in social media.
Fondecyt Regular
This is an individual 4-year grant awarded by the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), mine will run from 2024 to 2028. In this project I will use ZTF and Vera Rubin LSST photometric data and SDSS-V and 4-MOST (CHANGES) spectra to study the evolution of the accretion disc in quasars. Together with a group of students we will track the changes in the spectrum of the disc with normal changes in flux; establish how the characteristic timescales of variability depend on black hole mass, accretion rate and wavelength; find and characterize new populations of quasars using variability instead of colors, and detect extremely rare events, such as quasars undergoing state transitions and/or catch them as they are switching on. This grant can fund undergraduate and masters theses and complement PhD scholarships, as well as fund travel for the students in my group.