Héctor Gil-Marín wins the Young Researcher Prize in Theoretical Physics awarded by the Spanish Royal Physics Society

2020-09-21 08:30:00

Héctor Gil-Marín, a researcher from the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) —and postdoctoral Junior Leader 'La Caixa' Fellow—, has been rewarded with the Young Researcher Award in Theoretical Physics of the “Real Sociedad Española de Física – Fundación BBVA 2020” Physics Prizes, as was announced last Friday 18 September by the Spanish Royal Physics Society.

The jury highlights his outstanding contributions to the analysis and interpretation of galaxy mapping, advancing our understanding of the accelerated Universe. Gil-Marín was a member of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and extended BOSS (eBOOS) international collaborations and actively participated in the analysis of their data, which resulted in the recently published largest three-dimensional map of the distribution of galaxies ever created. The analysis of this galaxy map allowed scientists to understand what happened during a history gap of 11 billion years in the middle of the expansion of the Universe and to measure its expansion rate and growth of structure 6,500 millions of years ago. Gil-Marín is currently a researcher of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), where he plays a leading role in the survey mapping.

Héctor Gil-Marín obtained his PhD in Physics in 2012 at the Universitat de Barcelona. He has been a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation of University of Portsmouth (UK), and a Lagrange fellow at the LPNHE of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris). From 2018, he holds a Junior Leader 'La Caixa' fellowship at ICCUB.