HITS and Yale: Over the ocean, across the Universe

Start of the HITS-Yale program in astrophysics – the collaboration comprises two postdoctoral fellowships as well as regular meetings in Heidelberg and New Haven

The Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and Yale University, New Haven/U.S, have started a joint initiative to foster collaboration between astronomers and astrophysicists on both sides of the ocean: the HITS-Yale Program in Astrophysics, funded by the Klaus Tschira Stiftung (Foundation).

The program is jointly run by Prof. Volker Springel, head of the Theoretical Astrophysics group at HITS, and Frank van den Bosch, Associate Professor of Astronomy at Yale University. It is initially funded for a 4-year period. This includes funding for two “Tschira” postdoctoral fellows, named after the physicist Klaus Tschira (1940-2015), the founder of the Klaus Tschira Stiftung. The Klaus Tschira Stiftung promotes the advancement of natural sciences, mathematics, and computer science. Each fellow will spend two years at Yale and two years at HITS for a research stay. The two Tschira fellows selected for this program are Freeke van de Voort and Nir Mandelker.

Freeke van de Voort, who is currently a postdoctoral fellow at University of California Berkeley, will start her fellowship this fall at HITS, and go to Yale University in the summer of 2018. Freeke got her PhD in 2012 from the University of Leiden and is an expert in hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation.

Nir Mandelker is currently finishing his PhD Thesis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with Prof. Avishai Dekel. He will start his fellowship at Yale University this fall, and move to HITS in the summer of 2018. Nir is an expert in galaxy formation, and has worked on violent disk instabilities, compressible turbulence, and instabilities in cold streams.

Next to the fellows and their research stays, the collaboration will also include collaboration meetings, where astrophysicists and astronomers from HITS and Yale visit each other at their respective institution to exchange ideas and work together.

Scientific Contact:
Prof. Dr. Volker Springel
Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS)
phone: +49-6221-533-241
volker.springel@h-its.org
www.h-its.org