Santi Cassisi

Stay at the IAC: 04/11/2013 to 14/12/2013

Research line: Stellar and Interstellar Physics

Currently Dr. Cassisi is a researcher ("Primo Ricercatore") at the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica-Osservatorio Astronomico di Terano.

He began his career with a Grant of the Ministry for Scientific Research of the French Governement since in 1993, spent at the Astronomical Observatory of Meudon-Paris. Then he had a PhD fellowship in Physics at the University of L'Aquila since 1995 to 1997. Dr. Cassisi is a staff researcher at the INAF - Astronomical Observatory of "Collurania" - Teramo since 1998.

His main research fields are theoretical stellar evolution and its application to the study of both galactic and extra-galactic stellar populations. In this field, he has published about 330 scientific papers so far, about 170 are referred publications and two monographies for students and researchers.

Scientific activity during the period spent at IAC:

During the period spent at IAC, he collaborated with Prof. A. Aparicio, and the Severo Ochoa postdoctoral fellow S. Hidalgo on several projects related to the study of stellar populations in Local Group dwarfs and Ultra Faint Dwarfs. Part of this work has been published in The Astrophysical Journal. Within this group he extensively worked on the study of the Star Formation History of the irregular galaxy NGC6822, although the most important topic on which he worked during this period was that related to the build up of a new stellar model library that will represent a significant extension/improvement with respect to the currently used BaSTI library. This latter project was done mainly in collaboration with Dr. S. Hidalgo.

During his stay at IAC he also worked with Dr. A. Vazdekis on a paper devoted to present a new library of spectral indices for studying unresolved stellar populations based on the BaSTI stellar model library.