Biographical+Sketches

toc //**Members:** Please place your sketch in alphabetical order by last name://

Jon Arons
I am a professor UC Berkeley. I am fascinated by the physics of compact astrophysical objects, especially neutron stars. I am intrigued by the bizarre behavior of fully ionized plasmas, which mix long range electromagnetic forces with kinetic particle behavior. I merge these interests by using analytic theory and computer simulation to study the magnetospheres of neutron stars and their interactions with their environs, and their role in the acceleration of high energy particles.

Pasquale Blasi
Head of the High Energy Astrophysics Group at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory in Firenze, Italy. A theorist involved in the investigation of the acceleration mechanisms for cosmic rays up to their highest energies, their propagation and related topics (non-thermal aspects of clusters of galaxies, dark matter annihilation).

Damiano Caprioli
I am a post-doc at the Osservatorio di Arcetri, Florence (Italy) working with prof. Pasquale Blasi. I am currently studying non-linear particle acceleration at SNR shocks and the origin of cosmic rays adopting a semi-analytic approach which takes into account also magnetic field amplfication and particle escape from the accelerator.

Luke Drury
Head of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. A theoretician interested in astrophysical gas dynamics, particle acceleration, origin of cosmic rays etc. Currently developing an interest in plasma simulations as applied to these areas.

Don Ellison
I'm a professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. I work mainly on problems related to the production of cosmic rays and particle acceleration in astrophysical shocks.

Stefan Funk
assistant professor jointly at Stanford University and SLAC. Working on H.E.S.S. and the Fermi-LAT, mostly interested in gamma-ray sources and implications for particle acceleration.

John Kirk
is a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics ("Kernphysik") in Heidelberg, and associate professor at the University of Heidelberg. He has worked on several aspects of particle acceleration, in particular in relativistic flows, and has recently developed an interest in laboratory experiments with intense laser beams.

Samuel Martins
I'm a PhD student working with Prof. Luís Silva at IST/Lisbon on the PIC simulation of astrophysical shocks. Currently, we are leveraging on the particle tracking algorithms of our PIC codes to estimate radiation generation and to investigate the microphysics of particle acceleration in collisionless shocks. In the past 18 months I have been at UCLA, working also on plasma accelerators with Prof. Warren Mori and Prof. Chan Joshi.

**Dan Patnaude**
I'm an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. My primary interests concern X-ray and optical observations of supernova remnants and the modeling of astrophysical shocks.

Christoph Pfrommer
I am a senior research associate at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) in Toronto. My main research interests lie at the intersection of cosmology and plasma astrophysics. I am interested in CR acceleration and the resulting feedback in clusters and galaxies, the origin and evolution of large scale magnetic fields, and how this relates to the various non-thermal observables ranging form the radio to gamma-rays. To study these topics, I run cosmological structure formation simulations of the formation of galaxies, clusters, and large scale structure. I complement those with high-resolution MHD AMR simulations of idealized problems, and finally I confront simulated to real observables or predict them for future missions and experiments (radio: GMRT, LOFAR, SKA; hard X-ray: SimbolX, NuSTAR; gamma-rays: Fermi, MAGIC, HESS, VERITAS, CTA).

**Martin Pohl**
currently associate professor at Iowa State University, but as of October professor at Potsdam University and lead scientist for theoretical astroparticle physics at DESY Zeuthen. As theoretician interested in the acceleration of, and emission by relativistic particles, in recent years using PIC simulations. Also involved in several observational programs, for example VERITAS and GLAST/Fermi.

Brian Reville
Currently a post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. Main interests include particle acceleration and plasma instabilities at astrophysical shocks, both relativistic and non-relativistic.

**Luís Silva**
I'm an associate professor of physics at IST/Lisbon working on the interaction of ultra intense fields/flows with plasmas in problems with relevance to astrophysical scenarios, plasma accelerators and fast ignition, with a combination of massively parallel particle-in-cell simulations and relativistic kinetic theory.

**Pat Slane**
Senior Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. My primary interests center on multiwavelength studies studies of supernova remnants and pulsar wind nebulae, with particular emphasis on observational constraints on particle acceleration and spectral evolution in these systems.

Andrey Vladimirov
A postdoc at North Carolina State University studying strong collisionless shocks (magnetic field amplification and efficient particle acceleration) with the Monte Carlo method. In October 2009 will move to Stanford University to work on topics related to cosmic ray production and propagation in the context of Fermi observations.