Our Team
The 'Lively Stars' Team: An Introduction
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Alexander Shapiro
Head of Stellar Astrophysics
Head of the SOLVe Group
Alexander (Sasha) studied mathematics and astronomy at Saint Petersburg State University (Russia). In 2009, he was awarded his doctorate by ETH Zürich. After a postdoc at the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos he joined the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, first as a Marie Curie Fellow and then as the Leader of a Group funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council.
Dr. Sowmya Krishnamurthy
Senior Scientist
Sowmya obtained her Masters’ degree from Bangalore University and PhD degree (in the year 2017) from Indian Institute of Astrophysics. After a short postdoc at the Udaipur Solar Observatory, she joined the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen and researched solar and stellar variability due to magnetic activity.
Dr. Veronika Witzke
Senior Scientist
Veronika is working on understanding stellar atmospheres and how magnetic fields manifest in them through numerical calculations using the MURaM code. Her work involves continuously improving three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (3D MHD) simulations that incorporate radiative transfer. Additionally, she develops and maintains the MPS-ATLAS code, which enables the calculation of detailed (high-resolution and low-resolution) spectra from 3D MHD cubes.
Dr. Dusan Vukadinovic
PostDoc
My main research interest is in radiative transfer theory and its application in the analysis of solar and stellar spectra to infer their physical characteristics.
Dipl.-Ing. Florian Kröll
PhD Student in Astrophysics
Driven by a fascination with the universe, I pursued a Master’s in Space Sciences before beginning my PhD at the Institute for Astrophysics and Geophysics at the University of Graz.
Dr. Cosima Breu
PostDoc
Cosima completed a bachelor’s degree in physics and a Master’s degree in Computational Physics at the Goethe University of Frankfurt. In 2022, she obtained a PhD at the University of Goettingen working on MHD simulations of plasma loops in the solar corona.
Imtiyaz Chauhan
Imtiyaz started his career in the aviation and travel industry. That inspired him to travel himself while pursuing self-studies acquiring his bachelor and MA in English literature, public administration and sociology.