Meet our scientists: Anna Ferré-Mateu

Anna and Ona

Anna Ferré-Mateu is an astronomer and “La Caixa” postdoctoral researcher at our Institute. Anna talks with Ona about the planets and the Solar System, and she explains to Ona her research on galaxy formation and evolution, while Ona dreams about becoming a vet and having a clinic next to a riding centre. 

Anna Ferré-Mateu specialized in the study of the most massive galaxies when she was doing her PhD at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, and then she moved to Hawaii to work with the Japanese telescope Subaru. After that, she focused her interest in the study of the least massive galaxies while working in Melbourne, Australia. Now she is focusing on researching the dimmest galaxies of the Universe. She is especially interested in how the sizes, morphologies and stellar populations of galaxies vary over cosmic time and their relation to the supermassive black holes found in their centers. When she is not at the Faculty of Physics, you will find her surfing or diving in the sea, walking or skiing in the mountains. If you cannot find her, she is travelling around the world.

Anna is a member of the Galaxy Structure and Evolution research group at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences. The group’s researchers study both galactic astronomy – inside the Milky Way- and extragalactic astronomy – beyond the Milky Way. This includes a large array of objects ranging from dwarf galaxies, quasars and clusters of galaxies, and spanning the last 13 billion years of the history of the Universe. The research in extragalactic astronomy includes the modelling of galaxy’s formation processes, the study of intergalactic matter and making predictions based on analytical models.