Main Research Fields

My research focuses on the processes of star and planet formation, in particular on the evolution of protoplanetary disks. So far, I have studied in detail the interaction of the forming star with the surrounding protoplanetary disk through accretion of matter. This was done mainly using UV to optical and near-infrared spectroscopical data (e.g. VLT/X-Shooter spectra) on YSOs in different star forming regions and at different evolutionary states, such as classical TTauri stars or transitional disks. While continuing to investigate this process, I am now studying the effects of dynamical interactions in young stellar clusters on the evolution of protoplanetary disks combining optical and infrared data with the future GAIA data release.


Keywords

  • protoplanetary disk evolution
  • star and planet formation
  • young stellar clusters
  • accretion processes
  • transitional disks

Ongoing collaborations

  • ESA (Timo Prusti, Jos de Bruijne, Teresa Antoja, Christian Schneider, Pablo Rivière Marichalar, Bruno Merìn, Ignacio Bustamante, Catarina Alves de Oliveira)
  • Leiden University (Eleonora Zari, Anthony Brown, Gráinne Costigan, Lucie Jilkova)
  • ESO (Leonardo Testi, Giacomo Beccari, Suzanne Ramsay, Gaitee Hussain, H. Baobab Liu, Anna McLeod)
  • IoA Cambridge (Giovanni Rosotti, Cathie Clarke)
  • INAF (Antonella Natta, Juan Alcalà, Simone Antoniucci, Davide Fedele, Jets and Disks at INAF, Kazi Rygl, Antonio Frasca, Brunella Nisini)
  • STScI (Massimo Robberto)
  • UNAM (Roberto Galvan-Madrid)
  • MPE (Stefano Facchini)
  • Kavli Institute Peking University (Greg Herczeg)
  • USM (Barbara Ercolano)
  • University of Colorado (Kevin France)
  • University of Milan (Giuseppe Lodato)
  • University of Florida (Nicola Da Rio)

Publications

Link to ADS

Project/mission at ESA

Gaia

 

Personal homepage

 

Contacts:

Office: BA131

Phone: +31(0)71 565 6350

Mail: cmanara@cosmos.esa.int