“El exceso de estudio causa tanta erudición como falta de imaginación.”

Rolando Dünner

About me

Life is a single time opportunity to see the Universe as it is, to discover its mysteries, learn about it and about us. My scientific interests are strongly driven by the previous maxima. How was the Universe formed? What is it made of? How did it become what it is today? How do we expect it to be in the future? How could this tiny world ever become our home? We live an exciting time in history when some of the most important questions of mankind can finally be answered.

I have devoted most of my research work to answer some of these questions, especially those related to cosmology and to the large scale structure of the Universe. Although always interested in theory and physics, as a good engineer I enjoy working with my hands on something I can touch, this is how I found in experimental astronomy an extraordinary opportunity to do both things at the same time. As a Ph.D. student I became member of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) , a large project lead by Princeton University whose main goal is to measure the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) at arcminute scales. There I had the opportunity to participate in many aspects of the design, construction, installation and setup in Chile, first observations, data reduction and first scientific results from the telescope. It has been a great experience for which I encourage other students to get involved in the same way as I did.

As an associate professor at PUC, my main goal has been to insert our local community into some of the most extraordinary cosmological experiments that are taking place these days. Thanks to the unique observing conditions in Chile, chilean students and researchers have an excellent opportunity to participate in this exciting science and technology, together with the most famed research groups in the world. Thus it is our duty to exploit the most out of this natural resource that was given to us, not only contributing to the human-kind understanding of nature, but also helping to develop our country by bringing this new technology on to our people’s hands.

Nowadays, our CMB group at PUC has become an active collaborator of several experiments installed in Chile, contributing on various topics, including data reduction, map-making, map-analysis, optical follow-up, telescope characterization, electromagnetic simulations and atmosphere characterization. I invite students to visit my “Research Opportunities” page to find out more about what you can do.

Following the links on this page you can find out more about what I do and about what you can do. Please feel free to email me if you are interested in contributing to any of these topics.