Irene Tamborra receives Villum Ascending Investigator Grant
Professor Irene Tamborra, Head of the Particle Astrophysics Group at the Niels Bohr Institute, has been awarded an Ascending Investigator Grant of 18,2 Mkr from the Villum Foundation for the project titled “Discovering the Unknown Sky.” This new research program will be launched in Fall 2026 and will run for five years.
Irene Tamborra is Chair of the Advisory Board of the Niels Bohr International Academy. She is also a Mercator Fellow (equivalent to a Visiting Professor) at the Max Planck Institutes for Physics and Astrophysics in Germany. Her research lies at the interface of astrophysics and particle physics. Her work focuses on the violent universe, especially on stellar explosions and transient astrophysical events, with the aim of uncovering what can be learned by adopting neutrinos, photons, and gravitational waves as probes of the underlying physics of these sources. She is also an expert in the modeling of (quantum) particle transport and particle acceleration in astrophysical outflows, as well as physics beyond the Standard Model and the nucleosynthesis of the heavy elements. Irene Tamborra was convener of the 2021 HEP Planning Exercise (Snowmass) and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Astroparticle Physics European Consortium (APPEC). She is the recipient of several international awards for her research, including the MERAC Prize from the European Astronomical Society, the Duggal Award from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the EliteForsk Award from the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, and the European Research Council Consolidator Award.