EAS Council

Members

▾ Roger Davies (UK) — President (since 2017, Vice-President 2012-2017)

Responsibility: Chair Council meetings, Business meetings with the Affiliated Societies, and the annual General Assembly; Link to the University of Geneva and EAS Office; Liaison with IAU & AAS; Oversee EU Special Representative.

Roger Davies is the Philip Wetton Professor and Head of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and President of the Royal Astronomical Society 2010-12. He grew up in Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire attending the John Leggott School going on to read Physics at University College London. He started research working on galaxy dynamics in Cambridge in the 1970s after which he moved to California before spending 6 years on the staff of the US National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. As part of the "7 Samurai" team he worked out a new way of measuring the distances to galaxies and discovered the "Great Attractor", a huge concentration of galaxy clusters in the southern sky. He moved to Oxford in 1988 to lead the UK's participation in the construction of the 8m Gemini telescopes, in Hawaii and Chile. In 1994 he took up the post of Professor of Astronomy at Durham University returning to Oxford in 2002 where he was Chairman of the Physics Department from 2005-10. His research interests centre on cosmology and how galaxies form and evolve. He has a longstanding interest in astronomical instruments & telescopes. In recent years he has pioneered the use of a new class of astronomical spectrograph to measure the masses and ages of galaxies, as well as search for black holes in their nuclei.

▸ Sara Lucatello (Italy) — Vice-President (since 2018)

Responsibility: EAS Annual Meeting Board; Liaison with ASTRONET; Satellite Constellations Working Group; Diversity & Inclusion and Advisory Committee; Social media presence

Sara Lucatello works at the INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova. She obtained her undergraduate degree and PhD from University of Padova, Italy. After postdoctoral work at University of Texas Austin, she was INAF fellow in Padova and later Excellence Cluster Universe fellow in Munich. She joined the faculty at INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova in 2006. She served as a member of the science teams in the SDSS surveys SEGUE-2 and APOGEE and is currently a member of the Galactic Archeology steering committee of European survey WEAVE, where she also coordinates the calibration teams. She has served as a member and co-chair of the Committee of Participation of Women in Sloan and as a member of the Committee for Inclusion in Sloan, the organs for diversity and equal opportunities in the SDSS collaboration. Her scientific interests focus on spectroscopic studies of stellar populations, the formation and chemo-dynamical evolution of the Milky Way and its subcomponents, large Galactic stellar surveys and Big Data in Astronomy.

▸ Lex Kaper (The Netherlands) — Vice-President (since 2020; Councillor 2016-2020)

Responsibility: Chairman of EAS Annual Meeting board

Lex Kaper is a Professor of Astronomy at the Anton Pannekoek Institute of the University of Amsterdam. He obtained his PhD in astronomy at the University of Amsterdam in 1993. He moved to the European Southern Observatory Headquarters and spent there 4 years as a (senior) postdoctoral fellow. In 1998 he was awarded a 5-year Royal Academy fellowship and returned to the University of Amsterdam. In 2005 he obtained a professorship at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research interests focus on massive stars, their formation, evolution and fate. He is involved in the development of astronomical instrumentation: he is the NL-PI of the optical to near-infrared X-shooter spectrograph on the ESO Very Large Telescope an co-PI of MOSAIC, a multi-object spectrograph under development for the European Extremely Large Telescope. Lex Kaper is a member of the IAU Membership Committee and Secretary of the Nederlands Comite Astronomie.

▸ Inma Dominguez (Spain) — Secretary (since 2020; Councillor 2019-2020)

Responsibility: Membership Committee; Liaison with Affiliated Societies; Liaison with African Astronomical Society; Support to E-ROAD

Inma Dominguez is Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Granada (UGR). She obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of La Laguna and her PhD from the University of Barcelona (1991). Inma has worked on Type Ia Supernovae since her doctoral thesis and on stellar evolution since her postdoc at the Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale (Frascati, Italy), being a frequent research visitor at the INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico d'Abruzzo, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Chicago. Together with other colleagues, in 2010 she founded the Azarquiel School of Astronomy, a scientific bridge between Eastern and Western cultures. She served as Director for Internationalization at the School for Postgraduate Studies of UGR (2011-2015) and has been member of the Organization Committee of the IAU Commission Stellar Constitution (2012-2015).

▸ Nick Kylafis (Greece) — Treasurer (since 2019, Councillor 2018-2019)

Responsibility: Finances, incl. EAS annual meetings; Recruitment of Organisational members

Nick Kylafis was a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech (1979 - 1981) and at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1981 - 1984). Then, he was an Assistant Professor at Columbia University (1984 - 1985) before accepting an Assistant Professor position at the University of Crete in 1985. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1989 and Professor in 1997. He served as Chairman of the Department of Physics from 1999 to 2003, as well as Dean of the School of Sciences from September 2008 to May 2013. During the period 2012-2016 he was a member of the Council of the University of Crete. He retired and was elected Emeritus Professor in 2016.

▸ Andreas Burkert (Germany) — Councillor (since 2018)

Responsibility: European Regional Office of Astronomy for Development; Overseeing of issues on education; Link to Heraeus Foundation

Andreas Burkert holds the chair for computational astrophysics at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München since 2003. He got his doctoral degree from the University of Munich (1989) and then went on a Feodor Lynen Fellowship to the University of Illinois, Urbana (1989-1990) and to the University of California, Santa Cruz (1990-1991). In 1991 he joined the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics in Garching as a staff member and in 1995 accepted an offer from the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg to build a new theory group. In 1995 he also received the Habilitation.

▸ Georges Meylan (Switzerland) — Councillor (since 2016)

Responsibility: Chair EAS Prize Committees (Tycho Brahe Medal, Jocelyn Bell Burnell Inspiration Prize, MERAC and Zwicky prizes); Oversee nomination of the Lodewijk Woltjer Lecturer

Georges Meylan is a Professor Emeritus of Astrophysics and Cosmology at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Georges Meylan was the director of the EPFL Laboratory of Astrophysics from 2004 to 2015. After a PhD thesis at the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Geneva, Georges Meylan was a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and at the headquarters of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Munich, Germany. He then held positions as "senior astronomer" at ESO in Munich and at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, USA. He was also a Visiting Associate, from 1999 to 2012, at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA. While at EPFL, he was, from 2008 to 2014, the scientific delegate for Switzerland to the ESO Council and, from 2006 to 2014, President of the Swiss Commission for Astronomy of the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences. Georges Meylan's research focuses on observational cosmology, including the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, and on stellar and galactic dynamics. He currently delivers a course on the history of cosmology, open to students from all faculties of the University of Lausanne.

▸ Maarten Baes (Belgium) — Councillor (Councillor since 2017, Editor since 2016)

Responsibility: Newsletter Editor

Maarten Baes finished his PhD at the Astronomical Observatory of Ghent University in 2001 on the effects of interstellar dust on the observed kinematics of galaxies. After a postdoctoral fellowship from the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research that brought him to Cardiff, and an ESO fellowship in Chile, he returned to Ghent to become lecturer in 2004. In 2008 he became senior lecturer, and in 2014 he was promoted to professor. In his research he likes the combination of astronomical observations over the entire wavelength range and state-of-the-art numerical simulations. His main interests are the interstellar medium in nearby galaxies (with a particular focus on interstellar dust), radiative transfer and galaxy evolution. He has actively participated in the exploitation of ESA's Herschel mission, and is involved in the scientific preparation of several forthcoming instruments, including MIRI on the JWST, METIS on the E-ELT, and the Euclid and Athena missions.

▸ Agata Różańska (Poland) — Councillor (Councillor since 2020)

Responsibility: Newsletter Deputy Editor; EAS Annual Meeting Board

Agata Różańska is Associate Professor at CAMK PAN (N. Copernicus Astronomical Center Polish Academy of Science) since 2009. She obtained in 1996 her Master degree at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw. In 2000 she obtained her PhD at CAMK PAN on the oexistence of the cold and the hot plasma in the vicinity of the black hole, under the supervision of Prof. Bożena Czerny. From 2000 to 2009, she was postdoc and then tenured at CAMK PAN. She obtained her habilitation in 2009.

▸ Antoaneta Antonova (Bulgaria) — Councillor (Councillor since 2020)

Responsibility: Issues on education; Liaison with Sustainability and Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Committees

Antoaneta Antonova is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Astronomy and National Astronomical Observatory, part of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Her master's degree in Physics is from Sofia University, Bulgaria. She did her PhD at Armagh Observatory and Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. From 2008 until 2012 she was an assistant professor at the Department of Astronomy, Sofia University, and an Associate Professor at the same department from 2012 until the end of 2018. She is currently the President of the Bulgarian Astronomical Society and Chair of the National committee for organising the National astronomy Olympiad. Her main research interests are in the field of magnetic activity of cool stars and brown dwarfs and its diagnostics in the optical and radio domains.

The EAS Council is helped by the EAS Executive Secretary, Marc Audard, who leads the EAS Office.