- Seven researchers from the Center for Astrophysics and Associated Technologies (CATA) have been awarded Fondecyt Regular funding through the 2025 grant call managed by Chile’s National Research and Development Agency (ANID). This funding will enable them to pursue scientific and technological research aimed at generating new knowledge or applications. In addition, a Fondecyt Initiation Grant was awarded to another CATA-affiliated researcher.
CATA continues to strengthen its role in scientific and astronomical research. In this context, the awarding of multiple Fondecyt Regular grants to various research projects marks a milestone, with seven researchers receiving support to advance their respective lines of work.
Funded by ANID, these projects aim to promote science and technology-based research across multiple fields of knowledge by supporting individual research endeavors of excellence. The Fondecyt Initiation program, with a similar mission, focuses on supporting emerging researchers through 2–3 year projects.
The CATA researchers, both principal and associate, who were awarded these grants are: Antonela Monachesi and Facundo Gómez, both from the University of La Serena; Marcos Díaz, from the University of Chile; Gijs Mulders, from Adolfo Ibáñez University; Leo Vanzi and Ezequiel Treister, both from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile; Manuel Aravena, from Diego Portales University; and Rodrigo Herrera-Camus, from the University of Concepción, who was awarded a Fondecyt Initiation Grant.
Featured Research Projects
Facundo Gómez (University of La Serena) will lead the project "Scars of Evolution: Unveiling Galactic Histories through Morphological Perturbations and Ongoing Activity". His research seeks to identify and characterize key physical processes shaping galaxy properties across environments, epochs, and scales—using state-of-the-art cosmological simulations and advanced observational data. He will also explore how dense galaxy cluster environments affect star formation rates at high redshifts.
“This work aims to expand our understanding of how galaxies evolve, offering new insights into their formation based on global properties and morphological perturbations, while also refining theoretical models of galactic evolution through analysis of interaction-driven dynamics,” Gómez explains.
Manuel Aravena (UDP) will conduct the project “Origins of Ionized Carbon Halos in Distant Systems,” focusing on one of the most intriguing phenomena in the study of galaxy formation: the detection of widespread ionized carbon gas in the early universe. This research will help elucidate the relationship between the interstellar medium and the circumgalactic medium—gas and dust surrounding galaxies—and how carbon, a critical element for life, has evolved over cosmic time.
In parallel, another awarded research project is “A platform to sustain and study extreme-life in space with CubeSats”, led by Marcos Díaz, Associate Researcher at the Center and professor at the University of Chile. This project proposes to advance the development of a hardware and software platform to continuously study the growth of extremophiles in space, as well as to develop systems that allow the study of extremophile microorganisms with fully active metabolic machinery or that can reactivate dehydrated samples in space.
This platform will not only include sensors to monitor microorganisms, but also sensors for key environmental variables such as temperature, radiation, and more. The study aims to support the search for life in the vicinity of the solar system. Likewise, monitoring extreme microbial life that could be found on other celestial bodies—and studying the signs it may leave behind or the likelihood of reactivation—are key elements for remote life detection through astronomy.
On the other hand, Antonela Monachesi, Principal Investigator at CATA and professor at the University of La Serena, will work on her project “Relics of structure formation: from dwarf galaxies to the outskirts of galaxy clusters”, which aims to understand how galaxies grow and evolve over cosmic time. The project is based on the Λ-Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) cosmological model, which suggests that large-scale structures in the universe form hierarchically by assembling smaller systems. Massive structures, such as galaxy clusters, continue to assemble over time, while dwarf galaxies are formed during earlier stages.
This research aims to provide a deeper understanding of galaxy formation and evolution by comparing results with advanced cosmological simulations—an essential step for interpreting data and assigning physical meaning to the observational findings. In doing so, it seeks to contribute new insights into the processes that shape galaxies and to build a more complete picture of how galaxies assemble over cosmic time. The outcomes are also intended to be used in educational and science outreach programs, helping to increase public interest in and understanding of astronomy and the universe.
Another Associate Researcher who was awarded a grant is Gijs Mulders, Associate Researcher and professor at Adolfo Ibáñez University, who will seek to identify where water worlds might be hiding among the known exoplanets through his project titled “Water Worlds: Formation and Composition of Transiting Exoplanets.” This research takes advantage of the wealth of observational data on transiting exoplanets and millimeter-resolved protoplanetary disks from ALMA, combining it with numerical models of planet formation through pebble accretion.
This study holds promise for bringing us closer to answering the question, “Are we alone in the universe?” through the study of exoplanets. At the same time, Mulders' work is designed to understand how a critical ingredient for life water is distributed among exoplanets, and thus to estimate how many potentially habitable planets might exist.
Ezequiel Treister, Principal Investigator, Director of CATA, and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, will lead a project titled “A Comprehensive View of the Connection Between Supermassive Black Hole Growth and Major Galaxy Mergers.” The project consists of three stages: First, the team will combine the sharpest and most sensitive observations using the ALMA radio telescope array and space-based X-ray telescopes to complete a census of the local population of growing supermassive black holes during the final stages of mergers between two or more massive galaxies.
Subsequently, the team will use multi-wavelength observations at high spatial resolutions, focusing on the 5 to 200 GHz range, with the ALMA, VLBA, and VLA radio telescopes to confirm the physical nature of the nuclear emission in these systems. Finally, they will utilize large optical and infrared surveys conducted with the Vera Rubin and Euclid observatories, respectively, to obtain robust observational constraints on the cosmic evolution of the population of growing supermassive black holes triggered by mergers.
El objetivo de esta investigación es lograr obtener la visión más completa de los agujeros negros supermasivos y empezar a responder preguntas acerca del crecimiento y evolución de las galaxias, la población de los agujeros negros más grandes que conocemos en el Universo y la conexión entre ambos fenómenos. Cabe destacar que en este trabajo, participará un número significativo de estudiantes tanto de pre como de postgrado en astronomía e investigadores jóvenes, contribuyendo así a la formación de capital humano avanzado en el país y a la consolidación de Chile como un líder y referente mundial en esta área.
Lastly, the seventh Fondecyt project, titled “Boosting the Role of Small Telescopes in the Era of Giants,” is led by Leonardo Vanzi, Associate Researcher at CATA and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. This research aims to enhance the role of small telescopes and their scientific synergy with larger ground- and space-based projects. The goal is to develop new tools for instrumentation, control, and software, highlighting the value of Chile’s small telescopes in the broader astronomical landscape.
Fondecyt Initiation Grant
Rodrigo Herrera-Camus, Associate Researcher at CATA and professor at the University of Concepción, will carry out his project titled “A Study of Gas, Dust, and Stars in Star-Forming Galaxies at the End of the Reionization Era.” The project aims to understand the evolution of gas, dust, and stellar content in star-forming galaxies when the Universe was approximately one billion years old. To achieve this, he will use data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which have enabled unprecedented observations of these distant galaxies. Through spectral modeling and emission line analysis, the researcher will study the properties of cosmic dust, the composition of the interstellar medium, and the relationship between metallicity and star formation in these primordial systems.
In addition, his research will explore the connection between galactic kinematics and the distribution of metals in order to better understand the physical processes that influenced the formation of the first galaxies. To this end, he will analyze gas dynamics at sub-kiloparsec scales and compare his findings with evolutionary models, allowing for the identification of key mechanisms in the production of dust and the mixing of metals in the early Universe. This work will not only provide new insights into galaxy evolution during its earliest stages, but will also contribute to the training of graduate students and the creation of a public database with processed data from ALMA, JWST, and the Hubble Space Telescope, facilitating access to this information for the scientific community.