Antonis Georgakakis
Dr. Antonis Georgakakis is the PI of the 4MOVE-U project. Currently, a Staff Researcher at the Institute of Astronomy Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens, he obtained his PhD in Astrophysics from Imperial College London in 1998. He is interested in observational studies of the structure of accretion flows onto supermassive black holes, the cosmological evolution Active Galactic Nuclei and their interplay with their host galaxies. For the interpretation of the observations he has been developing empirical and semi-empirical models of AGN populations in cosmological volumes. He is member of the eROSITA German Consortium.
Maria Chira
Dr. Maria Chira is a post-doctoral reseacher of the 4MOVE-U focusing on observational constraints on accretion flows onto supermassive black holes. Maria holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physics (2015) and a Master’s degree in Computational Physics (2017) from the Physics Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her Bachelor’s and Master’s theses focused on computational cosmology. In 2022, she was awarded her Ph.D. in Cosmology from the same university, in collaboration with the National Observatory of Athens, supported by a scholarship from the State Scholarships Foundation (IKY). Her research interests include active galactic nuclei (AGN) and accretion physics, galaxy clusters, and cosmology. She is a member of the eROSITA-DE and X-CLASS collaborations.
Maurizio Paolillo
Dr. Maurizio Paolillo is an external collaborator of 4MOVE-U contributing expertise on observational measurements of the ensemble variability of AGN populations. Maurizio is full professor of physics and astronomy at the Federico II University of Naples. He got his PhD in 2002 at the Palermo University, spending half of the program at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge (USA). In 2002 he moved to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, within the group of Prof. R. Giacconi and Dr. E. Schreier, before joining the Physics Department in Naples as a researcher first, associate and full professor later. His scientific interests concern the study of high energy phenomena in the universe, with emphasis on time variability studies to trace the accretion processes onto supermassive black holes. He collaborates closely with the National Institute of Astrophysics and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, and directs observing programs with optical (VST, VLT, TNG, HST) and high energy (Chandra, XMM) telescopes. He is a member of the LSST collaboration intended to exploit the Vera Rubin Telescope data, and lead of the Italian in-kind contribution using the VST telescope for timing studies of AGN; he is also a member of the Euclid telescope collaboration.
Angel Ruiz
Dr. Angel Ruiz is postdoctoral researcher of 4MOVE-U focusing on simulations of AGN variability and algorithms for finding transient X-ray populations. Angel obtained his PhD in the University of Cantabria (Spain), working in the X-ray Astronomy Group. Since then, He has worked as a postdoc in the Observatory of Brera (Italy), the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (India) and the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (Spain). Since 2017, he has worked in the National Observatory of Athens (Greece). His research has been focused in extragalactic astronomy, mainly in the study of Active Galactic Nuclei from the observational point of view. The two major topics he is interested in are the characterization of AGN demographics and the understanding of the link between supermassive black hole growth and galaxy formation/evolution.
Athanassios Akylas
Dr. Athanassios Akylas is collaborator of 4MOVE-U contributing expertise on the extraction of light curves from X-ray observations and studying the variability of AGN. Currently a staff researcher at the Institute of Astronomy Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens, he received his B.Sc. in Physics in 1999, his M.Sc. in Astronomy Astrophysics and Mechanics in 2002 and his PhD in X-ray Astronomy in 2006 from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He was Research Associate at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the National Observatory of Athens in the Scientific Program X-ray Astronomy with XMM-Newton (2002-2005). In 2005 he joined the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing as a Scientific Staff. In March 2017 he was promoted to Senior Scientist.
Johannes Buchner
Dr. Johannes Buchner is external collaborator of 4MOVE-U contributing expertise on the inference of the variability properties of AGN. Johannes is postdoctoral researcher at the High Energy Group of the Max-Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich. He pursued astronomy at the University of Vienna in parallel with computer science at the Technical University of Vienna. Since then, Johannes has continued to bridge these disciplines, developing a strong interest in statistics. Over the years, he has become an expert in computational and inference methods in astronomy — fields known as astroinformatics and astrostatistics — which he applies to a wide range of astrophysical questions related to gamma-ray bursts, the evolution of supermassive black holes, and exoplanets. Johannes is particularly fascinated by supermassive black holes that reside in the centers of galaxies and consume nearby material. These mysterious and exotic objects remain poorly understood, especially in terms of their origins and their influence on their host galaxies. Through his work with eROSITA and multiwavelength data, Johannes seeks to shed light on these questions. eROSITA excels at identifying the most rapidly growing black holes — those that may have the greatest impact on galactic evolution — and has already discovered millions of such objects. His research focuses on disentangling instrumental limitations, such as incomplete detections and noisy data, from the true astrophysical signals to better understand black hole populations, their growth over cosmic time, and their highly dynamic accretion processes. He also enjoys developing modern data analysis techniques to achieve these goals.
Brivael Laloux
Dr. Brivael Laloux has worked as PhD student of 4MOVE-U on empirical models of the incidence of AGN in galaxies. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physics at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. He obtained his master degree in 2020 from Uppsala University, Sweden. He was awarded his PhD in 2024 from the University of Durham on the link between QSOs obscuration and the early stages of the growth of supermassive black holes. Brivael has secured a postdoctoral position at the INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte.
Ivan Munoz-Rodriguez
Dr. Ivan Munoz-Rodriguez has worked as PhD student of 4MOVE-U on semi-empirical models of AGN and galaxies in cosmological volumes. He studied Physics in Salamanca University, Spain, and in the last year for his bachelor thesis he studied what effect would have over the Solar System if all dark matter would be composed by primordial black holes (PBH). He finished a master in Astrophysics, called FisyMat in Granada University, Spain. In his final master thesis he worked in the network of CARMENES studying the occurrences of exoplanets around M-dwarfs. He was awarded his PhD degree from the University of Southampton on semi-empirical models of the small-scale clustering AGN. Ivan is Postdoctoral Researcher at CEA (Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives) Saclay.
