Research Interests

My current and future research interests are concentrated on the following research topics:

• Modelling dust emission and attenuation in galaxies
  I would like to continue my previous study on modelling and quantification of dust attenuation effects in spiral galaxies (through radiative transfer techniques). Further extensions can include the study of the resolution effects on the photometric parameters of galaxies and also the dust induced changes in the photometric parameters of bulges in the case of barred galaxies (by simulating barred dusty galaxies through radiative transfer techniques and perform bulge-bar-disk decompositions). A further extension of this study would be the development of a fast, optimised algorithm meant to find the best fit to the observed images of galaxies from the existent library of simulated images (used in my previous study) produced by means of radiative transfer. This will circumvent the use of symmetric analytical functions for surface brightness photometry - which cannot fully take into account the asymmetries and distortions induced by dust. Constraining a part of the photometric parameters from fitting the SED of galaxies with model SEDs will determine a faster convergence of this algorithm.
  Moreover, I am interested in modelling the dust emission in the interstellar medium in the disks of spiral galaxies (diffuse dust emission) and from the torus surrounding AGNs.
• Star-formation & star-formation rates ; modelling the SEDs of spiral galaxies
  I am interested in how the star-formation process occurs and evolves from high redshift to present times, and its dependence on the environment, the dust and molecular gas content in galaxies. In this respect, it is important to calculate accurate SFR for large statistical samples of galaxies. This can be done by employing / developing panchromatic model SEDs and using the results I obtained for dust effects on disk scale-lengths (for broadband and narrow band images - Balmer/nebular lines).
• Morphological and structural analysis of galaxies; classification of galaxies
  I am also interested in studying the morphological and structural evolution of galaxies as a function of environment and redshift, the galaxy/disk size evolution with redshift. As galaxies are often characterised/classified by means of their Sérsic index (as bulge or disk dominated depending on the value of the bulge Sérsic index), $B/D$ ratio or concentration, it is important to develop more robust criteria for galaxy classification, to test /compare the accuracy of these criteria against the aforementioned ones (using observational data from surveys like GAMA, VISTA/VST, JWST, SPICA) and ultimately to quantify the morphological and structural evolution of galaxies with redshift and environment. Some of the theoretical dust corrections that I have previously obtained for dust and decomposition effects on Sérsic indices and $B/D$ ratios would be useful for this research. Likewise, I want to study and understand the processes that produce the disk breaks (truncations) in the outskirts of disks, and the evolution of the truncations with cosmic time, using observations and simulations. This will give us more clues about the process of galaxy formation and evolution and the radial migration of stars. The co-evolution of the black-holes and the host galaxies and the influence of the black-holes on the star-formation history of the host galaxies are other topics I would like to do research on. One way of analysing the latter is to study and understand the black hole scalling relations.
• Scaling relations; galaxy evolution
  Scaling relations are important because they provide information about the physical mechanisms of galaxy assembly over cosmic time and their understanding is essential for a successful model of galaxy formation and evolution. Therefore I would like to study and understand what determines the scaling relations of a galaxy. Using the theoretical predictions for dust effects, which could potentially reduce the scattering in these relations (together with the ones that will potentially be obtained in future studies), I would like to apply these to observational data (e.g. KINGFISH, GAMA, VISTA/VST, JWST, SPICA) in order to analyse scaling relations (e.g. size-luminosity, surface-brightness-size, Kormendy relation, size-mass, SFR-stelar mass, $M_{\rm BH}-n$ , $M_{\rm BH}-\sigma$ , $M_{\rm BH}-L$ , etc.) for disks and bulges of galaxies and the black holes, study their dependence on colour and morphology and understand their origin / nature.