My name is Pedro Naethe Motta and I’m a graduate (M.Sc.) student at IAG – USP. I’ve recently graduated in physics at Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) in beautiful Rio de Janeiro.
As most undergraduate physics students, I started my journey aiming to understand and study astrophysics. At first, I didn’t have the chance to do that, so I worked in a project about “chaotic dynamical systems” in the mathematics department, deviating from the original plan.
In the meantime, I found out that I didn’t want to pursue this academical journey. I undertook a semester in General Relativity and reached out to my professor, who gave me the opportunity to work and build my undergraduate thesis in astrophysics. My thesis was about the tidal effects in a neutron stars’ binary system and how these effects can help to unravel mysteries of how matter behave in neutron stars’ interior. Since then, I’m passionate about General Relativity and astrophysics.
I’m recently starting my journey at the IAG’s Black Hole Group, studying state transitions in black hole binaries using General Relativity Magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) under the supervision of Professor Rodrigo Nemmen.
Está disponível uma bolsa de doutorado direto FAPESP, para trabalhar no Grupo de Buracos Negros do Prof. Rodrigo Nemmen no IAG-USP, dentro do Projeto Jovem Pesquisador FAPESP “O Universo Extremo: Buracos Negros e o Telescópio Fermi“.
O projeto a ser desenvolvido é na área de astrofísica de altas energias, envolvendo observações em raios gama de buracos negros supermassivos com o Telescópio Espacial Fermi. O trabalho envolverá o estudante em colaborações internacionais do Prof. Nemmen.
A bolsa é livre de impostos e a FAPESP oferece apoio para os custos de mudança. O salário inicia em R$ 2043/mês, chegando a R$ 3726/mês no último ano de doutorado. A Reserva Técnica para participação em eventos, compra de material etc é de 30% do valor anual da bolsa (R$ 13414/ano).
Os candidatos interessados deverão entrar em contato por email com o Prof. Rodrigo Nemmen para entrevista, onde serão discutidos: • experiência em computação e pesquisa do candidato • motivação para fazer pós-graduação • redação • conhecimentos básicos em (astro)física. Os candidatos devem incluir no e-mail:
Histórico escolar de graduação (e de pós-graduação, se houver)
Link para o CV Lattes
Um ou dois contatos de referências
O candidato deverá passar primeiro o processo seletivo para o programa de Doutorado Direto em Astronomia do IAG-USP, com inscrições até 25 de Junho de 2020. Potenciais interessados também podem entrar em contato com o Prof. Nemmen para tirarem dúvidas, antes de se candidatarem ao programa de pós-graduação em Astronomia do IAG-USP.
One FAPESP PhD scholarship is available in the Black Hole Group of Prof. Rodrigo Nemmen at IAG-USP, within the Projeto Jovem Pesquisador FAPESP “The Extreme Universe: Black Holes And The Fermi Telescope”. The PhD project is in the field of high-energy astrophysics, involving the analysis of Fermi Large Area Telescope gamma-ray observations and associated physics. The work will involve the student in the scientific collaborations of Prof. Nemmen.
The salary is tax-free, and the funding agency provides relocation funding. The salary begins at R$ 2043/month, reaching R$ 3726/month in the last year of the graduate program. The scholarship includes funds for attending events in the amount of R$ 13414/year.
Candidates should contact Prof. Rodrigo Nemmen. If short-listed, they will be interviewed by the PI where they will be asked to discuss their: • research and computational experience • motivation for pursuing graduate school • writing skills • (astro)physics knowledge. The candidates should include in their e-mail:
Undergraduate transcripts (and graduate, if available)
Curriculum vitae
One or two reference contacts
The candidate must be accepted in the selection process for the programa de Doutorado Direto em Astronomia do IAG-USP (deadline: June 25, 2020). Candidates who are interested and have any questions should contact Prof. Nemmen.
Está disponível uma bolsa de mestrado FAPESP, para trabalhar no Grupo de Buracos Negros do Prof. Rodrigo Nemmen no IAG-USP, dentro do Projeto Jovem Pesquisador FAPESP “O Universo Extremo: Buracos Negros e o Telescópio Fermi“.
O projeto a ser desenvolvido envolve análise de observações em raios gama de buracos negros supermassivos com o Telescópio Espacial Fermi. O trabalho envolverá o estudante em colaborações internacionais do Prof. Nemmen.
A bolsa é livre de impostos e a FAPESP oferece apoio para os custos de mudança. O salário inicia em R$2043/mês. A Reserva Técnica para participação em eventos, compra de material etc é de 10% do valor anual da bolsa (R$2452/ano).
Os candidatos interessados deverão entrar em contato por email com o Prof. Rodrigo Nemmen para entrevista, onde serão discutidos: • experiência em computação e pesquisa do candidato • motivação para fazer pós-graduação • redação • conhecimentos básicos em (astro)física. Os candidatos devem incluir no e-mail:
Histórico escolar de graduação
Link para o CV Lattes
Um ou dois contatos de referências
O candidato deverá passar primeiro o processo seletivo para o programa de Mestrado em Astronomia do IAG-USP, com inscrições até 25 de Junho de 2020. Potenciais interessados podem entrar em contato com o Prof. Nemmen para tirarem dúvidas, antes de se candidatarem ao programa de pós-graduação em Astronomia do IAG-USP.
The black hole group has a new master: Artur Vemado defended his MsC dissertation, entitled “radiative cooling and state transitions in stellar mass black holes”. The defense was very successful.
Here, Artur reported his numerical simulations of black hole accretion flows where he incorporated radiative cooling (with some approximations otherwise the problem is essentially intractable!). We observe the self-consistent emergence of a hot corona enveloping a cold thin accretion disk. Artur quantified the inner radius of the thin disk, the size of the corona, and how these properties respond to varying the mass accretion rate onto the black hole. The resulting simulated black holes are similar to observations of stellar mass black holes in binary systems.
Artur Vemado’s MsC dissertation defense
We are looking forward to reporting these exciting results on the emergence of the corona (not the covid-19!) and truncated disk in an upcoming publication.
Many thanks to FAPESP funding through grant 2017/25710-1.
Congratulations to the now Dr. Gustavo R. R. Soares, for a successful PhD thesis defense! 🎉🍾
The thesis is entitled “Accretion discs, jets, and black hole spins: a study of blazars” and was done under my supervision. The whole defense was entirely online, following the social distancing recommendations of the World Health Organization and the São Paulo State government, in order to ensure the safety of all involved with respect to COVID-19.
The defense lasted for almost five hours (!!), with the thesis committee members in two countries—Brasil and US—and in three states in Brasil: Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Gustavo presenting his thesis work
Thanks to Dr. Soares’s work, we now we know a bit more about the role of black holes in the universe, and how the supermassive ones power relativistic jets.
Gustavo will begin a postdoc at Oregon State University in the Fall. We are all wishing Gustavo a huge success for his future career!
Our thanks to the Brazilian science funding agencies CAPES, CNPq and FAPESP. Without them, this work would not have been possible.
Let’s congratulate Ivan on his brilliant masters dissertation defense. His dissertation’s title is “Winds and feedback from supermassive black holes accreting at low rates”. In this work, Ivan performed a suite of hydrodynamical simulations of hot accretion flows with a large dynamical range and long durations (comparable to the viscous timescale), aiming at better understanding black hole wind production and feedback in low-luminosity AGNs hosted by quiescent galaxies.
We have a paper coming out soon, where we will report the results of this work. Stay tuned!
From left to right: Diego Falceta Gonçalvez, Rodrigo Nemmen, Ivan de Almeida, Thaisa Storchi Bergmann and Roderik Overzier.
The evaluation committee was composed of Thaisa Storchi Bergmann, Roderik Overzier and Diego Falceta Gonçalvez.
This work was funded by a FAPESP scholarship, grant number 2016/24857-6. It has made use of the following computing facilities:
Laboratory of Astroinformatics (IAG/USP, NAT/Unicsul; FAPESP grant 2009/54006-4)
Aguia cluster, HPC resources of Universidade de São Paulo
Raniere will be visiting the University of Torino over the next year, working with Prof. Francesco Massaro, in order to continue our group’s research to understand the unidentified gamma-ray sources observed with Fermi Large Area Telescope. In particular, he will use a suite of optical observations to try to pinpoint the nature of such sources.
Raniere’s visit will be funded by a FAPESP BEPE scholarship, grant number 2018/24801-6.
Hi! I’m Roberta Duarte Pereira and I’m a physicist graduated at IFSC-USP. I just started my master’s degree in the Black Hole Group at IAG-USP under the supervision of Prof. Rodrigo Nemmen. Since my childhood, one of my main passions in life is Astronomy, mainly Black Holes because they are so interesting and they always fascinated me. During my time in undergrad course, Computational Physics also called my attention. So I decided to connect both of my passions. Recently, I started a project – under the supervision of Professor Rodrigo—in astrophysical simulations with deep learning. It’s a project that may bring some new insights about how we see numerical simulations nowadays and we could gain so much in this area! I’m very happy and greatly motivated with this project and also for being in the Black Hole Group.
Roberta will work on applying machine learning and deep learning to numerical simulations of black holes, in collaboration with João Paulo Navarro from NVIDIA.
Welcome aboard, Roberta! We are glad you chose to come work in our group, and excited for the discoveries in the computational universe that will come from your project.
The PhD students of the group working on gamma-ray observations—Fabio and Raniere—spent the last two weeks in Washington DC and surroundings. They went to the Fermi LAT Collaboration meeting at George Washington University, where they interacted with gamma-ray astronomers in the Fermi Collaboration. Raniere presented his ongoing analysis of the gamma-ray emission of a population of nearby AGNs.
Raniere de Menezes presenting his work on low-luminosity AGNs at the Fermi LAT Collaboration Meeting, Washington DC.
Following the Collaboration meeting, the students presented their research at the Fermi Symposium in Baltimore. Raniere presented a poster about his work on the pulsar populations in Milky Way globular clusters—which is about to be submitted for publication—while Fabio gave a talk describing his analysis of the gamma-ray emission from the Galactic Center on constraints on Sgr A* physics.
Fabio Cafardo presenting his work on the gamma-ray emission of Sgr A* at the Fermi Symposium, Baltimore.
After the symposium, Fabio and Raniere spent a couple of days visiting NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to discuss their research with GSFC scientists.
Their visit was possible thanks to NASA funds, grant xxxxxx.
Matheus Tavares Bernardino, an undergraduate student working in our group, presented his work on the acceleration of black hole radiative transfer with OpenACC in GPUS at the undergraduate science symposium at USP and now will compete in the international phase of the symposium which will happen in November.
Congratulations, Matheus!
Matheus (right) and collaborator Alfredo Goldmann (left) happily showcasing the poster
Black Hole Group 