TOMAS VERDUGO'S WEBPAGE

I studied Physics at Facultad de Ciencias in Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexic. After I completed my post graduate studies at Instituto de Astronomia  in 2005, I did my PhD under the supervision of Dr. J. A. de Diego and the advisory of Dr. M. Limousin. My PhD dissertation was on Strong Lensing Models in galaxy clusters and the luminosity function of galaxies at  high redshift. My doctoral work was recipient of the award "Mejor Tesis Doctoral en Astronomía, Astrofísica, Cosmología y Ciencias espaciales, 2008" (Congreso Nacional de Astronomía, México).  I also received the Medalla Alfonso Caso, awarded by the UNAM to the best graduate student in astronomy of 2008.

During my doctoral studies we reconstructed the first 2D mass distribution in the cluster MS 2053-04 based on HST archive data (Verdugo et al. 2007). This work was possible thanks to the improvement that we did to the LENSTOOL code (Jullo et al. 2007). We implemented a Bayesian Monte Carlo Markov Chain method, in order to search for the most probable parameters of a lens model. Additionally, I analyzed the luminosity function (LF) of Ly$_{\alpha}$ emitters (LAEs) using the strong lensing models of two galaxy clusters. I also investigated the likelihood to observe and to analyze high redshift objects combining the capabilities of OSIRIS-GTC\footnote{OSIRIS (Optical System for Imaging and Low Resolution Integrated Spectroscopy) is an imaging system and a low-resolution long-slit and multi-object spectrograph for the Gran Telescopio de Canarias (GTC), Spain.} and the lensing effect (Verdugo2007a,deDiego2007).

Upon graduation, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher for two years at Departamento de Fisica y Astronomia, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Valparaiso. In that time I joined to the Strong Lensing Legacy Survey (SL2S) collaboration, in which I currently work actively. From 2011 to 2014 I did my second postdoctoral work position at Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomía, in Mérida, Venezuela.

Short history

PRESENT

I work as an Associated Researcher (Support Astronomer), at Instituto de Astronomía, Ensenada. México. http://www.astrosen.unam.mx/