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Alex Vañó, one of the group´s graduate students, has been awarded a FPU grant (“Formación del Profesorado Universitario”). This grant, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, is one of the most prestigious at the graduate level. It is also highly competitive - there are only 30 grants for Physics students from all over the country. FPU grants provide funding for 4 years.

Despite being only 25, Alex’s curriculum is already impressive. Vañó has several scientific stays in European research institutes in Germany and Austria, where black holes and particle physics (including the Higgs boson) were the topics to work on. Among the honors Alex has received are the “Premio Extraordinario de Licenciatura”, the “Premio Extraordinario de Bachillerato” and Gold Medals in the Physics and Chemistry Olympiads. Vañó is currently a member of the prestigious Spanish Consolider-Ingenio Project Multidark (Multimessenger Approach for Dark Matter Detection).

Alex did the undergraduate studies at UIB with Sascha Husa as advisor. Last June the resulting Master thesis was presented, “Numerical evolution of the Einstein equations in spherical symmetry: the GBSSN equations and conformal compactification”. As a continuation of this work, Alex will now start with the PhD thesis “Simulation and Detection of Gravitational Waves emitted by Black Hole Binary Systems”.

Alex Vañó recently attended the International Max Planck Research School on Gravitational Wave Astronomy (IMPRS). During the School, the PhD students took part in a project in which - divided into several teams - they had to design a gravitational wave detector. The team Alex was in designed “ET@Home”, a spacial detector. The team´s work was “approved” as a valid detector and it was highly commended for its sound scientific presentation.

Congratulations, Alex!