Contact Information

Andromeda

The Andromeda (M31) galaxy, the nearest large neighbor to the Milky Way. Astronomers have found that Andromeda’s structure resembles that of our own Galaxy. Image credit: Adam Evans (CC-BY 2.0).

About Me

I am an Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto in Canada. I completed my doctoral studies (Dr.rer.nat) in 2022 at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (ARI) at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, working under the supervision of Prof. Eva K. Grebel (PhD Thesis: "Unveiling the Milky Way’s History Using Young & Old Population Variable Stars"). Before that, I obtained my Bachelor of Science (BSc) and Master of Science (MSc) degrees at Universidad de Chile (in 2014 and 2017, respectively), the latter supervised by Prof. Ricardo Munoz (MSc Thesis: "Searching for distant RR Lyrae in the Galactic halo using the High cadence Transient Survey").

My research focuses on resolved stellar populations in the Milky Way and its neighborhood, with an emphasis on the Galactic halo, dwarf galaxies, and star clusters. With experience on time-series analysys, big data, and state-of-the-art astrostatistical techniques, I have specialized on Galactic archaeology and the use of pulsating variable stars (primarily RR Lyrae stars) as tracers of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way.

To conduct my research, I rely on small- and large-scale photometric and spectroscopic surveys. I am the Principal Investigator of the Halo Outskirts With VAriable STars (HOWVAST) survey, which aims to explore the outermost regions of the Milky Way using RR Lyrae stars, and to use them for Galactic archaeology. Moreover, I am involved in the development of several large-scale surveys. For instance, I am the main responsible for assembling the RR Lyrae star catalog in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Survey (DESI) and the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey (S5), and for developing pipelines for their spectroscopic characterization. Furthermore, I am an active contributor to the DECam Local Volume Exploration Survey (DELVE), where I serve as a coordinator of the WIDE subgroup.