Alberto Rodríguez Ardila
Stay at the IAC: 11/11/2014 to 10/12/2014
Research line: Formation and Evolution of Galaxies
Dr. Rodríguez Ardila will give a Severo Ochoa seminar at the IAC on December 9th 2014, entitled FeII emission in active galactic nuclei: results from NIR Spectroscopy.
Currently Dr. Rodríguez Ardila is researcher at the Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica (Itajubá, Brazil) and professor at the Graduate Program in Astronomy at the Universidade Federal de Itajubá.
Alberto Rodríguez-Ardila obtained his PhD in 1999 at the Universidade Federal
do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, with a thesis on the emission line properties of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies. Afterwards, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Instituto de Astronomia, Geofisica e Ciências Atmosféricas, São Paulo University, Brazil. Since 2002, he joined the scientific staff of the Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica, Itajubá, Brazil, and currently is full researcher in that institution. Alberto is also professor at the Graduate Program in Astronomy at the Universidade Federal de Itajubá, Brazil.
His main area of research focuses on active galactic nuclei (AGNs), particularly the physical properties of their emission line regions and the characterization of their circumnuclear stellar population. The main goals are to understand both the nature of the central engine of these objects by examining the gas close to it and direclty exposed its ionizing radiation flux and the possible connection between stellar formation and nuclear activity. In addition to his research activities, Alberto is the manager of the Brazilian science operations of the SOAR telescope and is Contact Scientist of the NIR instrumentation of the Brazilian Gemini Office.
During his visit to IAC, Dr. Rodríguez-Ardila will collaborate with Dr. Almudena Prieto on the analysis of SINFONI/VLT data of nearby AGNs with the purpose of studying the physical properties of the high-ionization emission lines of these objects and its relationship with the radio-jet and central ionizing radiation field.
