I am a PhD Candidate in the Computational Astrophysics group (CAstLe) at Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, under the supervision of Simon Portegies Zwart. My current research focuses on the survival of newly formed circumstellar disks in the hostile environment of young star forming regions. I am also very active in astronomy outreach, particularly in Spanish through my website and podcast Primer Fotón. In my free time I like to read novels, do nail art, practice embroidery, and sometimes a bit of drawing and watercolor painting and candy making.
Education
- MSc in Computer Science, Universidad de Chile, July 2016
Graduated with Highest Distinction.
Thesis: FADRA: A CPU-GPU Framework for Astronomical Data Reduction and Analysis.
My Master’s thesis is available online (in English, with abstract in Spanish) here. - BSc in Astronomy, Universidad de Chile, August 2013.
Graduated with Distinction.
Research
Current research: Circumstellar disks inside young star clusters
Many stars form in clustered environments, high in both stellar and gas densities. These are also the surroundings where circumstellar disks develop, soon after star formation. The hostile environments during the first millions years of evolution of star forming regions can dramatically affect the evolution of the circumstellar disks: they might get truncated by dynamical interactions with other nearby stars, they might get stripped off of their material due to the ram pressure of the gas that surrounds them, they might get evaporated due to the intense radiation from their host or neighbouring stars, among other processes. The disks also present internal viscous evolution, which leads them to grow through time. Understanding the processes that occur inside star forming regions and young star clusters helps us understand circumstellar disk evolution and, therefore, planetary formation.

Encounters with other stars can truncate protoplanetary disks.
The research I’m currently carrying out during my PhD looks to anwser many questions, among them: what are the main mechanisms affecting the evolution of circumstellar disks around stars in young clusters? From this, I also look to get insights about how our Solar System was formed. The way in which I am trying to tackle this problem is through the use of computational simulations. I run simulations of young star clusters using the Astrophysical Multipurpose Software Environment AMUSE, a community effort being developed in part by the Computational Astrophysics group at Leiden Observatory. In these simulations I consider the different processes that might be affecting the evolution of the circumstellar disks, and then analyze the resulting size distributions of the disks and other characteristics of the cluster.
We are lucky to be living in an era where we have powerful telescopes looking at the sky. Nowadays, thanks to enormous observational installations such as ALMA, it is possible to observe circumstellar disks inside their formation environments. Comparing these observations against simulation results offers an invaluable standard to measure if our simulations’ assumptions are leading us in the right direction.
MSc in Computer Science research: GPU-accelerated reduction of astronomical data
Astronomy is a data-intensive discipline, where Terabytes of information are being produced around the world every night. Quick processing and analysis of said data is crucial for the development of scientific results. Because of this, the pipelines of data processing tools for astronomy are beginning to embrace Big Data paradigms. However, hardware-wise, there are also ways to accelerate algorithms for data analysis.
During my Master’s program in Computer Science I developed a tool for astronomical data reduction and photometry obtention using GPU-accelerated algorithms. The GPU is the Graphics Processing Unit of a computer, and in the last decades the use of GPUs for accelerating mathematical calculations has become standard in many data-intensive areas. The design of the GPU allows for many calculations to be carried out in parallel, thus accelerating the execution times of algorithms sometimes for factors of two orders of magnitude, compared to their CPU counterparts.
However, designing data-intensive algorithms for the GPU is not straight-forward. You cannot just run your CPU scripts on a GPU, the whole problem needs to be re-thought and re-designed to take advantage of the GPU’s hardware.
My thesis (in English, with abstract in Spanish) is available here.
Publications
You can check my updated list of publications in NASA ADS.
Talks & poster presentations
(Last updated: December 2020)- 75th Netherlands Astronomers Conference
Online; 1–3 July 2020
Presentation: External photoevaporation of circumstellar discs constrains the time-scale for planet formation - (Outreach) 75th Netherlands Astronomers Conference
Online; 1–3 July 2020
Presentation: Astronomy on Tap in Europe - NOVA Network 2 Meeting
UvA API, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 10 October 2019
Presentation: External photoevaporation of circumstellar discs constrains the time-scale for planet formation - Leiden – Beijing Normal University Summer School on Computational Astrophysics 2019
Leiden Observatory, Leiden, The Netherlands; 8–19 July 2019
Lecture: Introduction to Computational Astrophysics - From Stars to Planets II: Connecting our understanding of star and planet formation
Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden; 17–20 June 2019
Poster: External photoevaporation of circumstellar disks constrains planet formation timescales - (Outreach) Astronomy On Tap Leiden: Women's History Month
Leiden, The Netherlands; 25 March 2019
Talk: Nevertheless we persisted: Women in Astronomy (video / slides / sources) - Leiden – Beijing Normal University Summer School on Computational Astrophysics 2018
Leiden Observatory, Leiden, The Netherlands; 9–20 July 2018
Lecture: Introduction to AMUSE - MODEST18: Dense stellar systems in the era of Gaia, LIGO, & LISA
Petros Nomikos Conference Centre, Firá, Santorini, Greece; 25–29 June 2018
Presentation: The viscous evolution of circumstellar disks in young star clusters - AMUSE mini-workshop.
RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Kobe, Japan; 21–22 June 2018
Invited lecture: Multi-scale simulations with AMUSE - 3rd Dutch Star Cluster Meeting (SOC)
Leiden Observatory, Leiden, The Netherlands; 6 October 2017
Presentation: The viscous evolution of protoplanetary disks inside young star clusters - MODEST17: Modelling and observing dense stellar systems
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic; 18–22 September 2017
Poster: The viscous evolution of circumstellar disks (v2) - MPIAA topical workshop: The formation and evolution of planets and their disks
MPA, Garching, Germany; 19–21 June 2017
Poster: The viscous evolution of circumstellar disks (v1) - (Outreach) Astronomy On Tap Leiden: Simulating the universe
Leiden, The Netherlands; 29 May 2017
Talk: Simulating the universe (video) - 72nd Netherlands Astronomers Conference
Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; 22–24 May 2017
Poster: The viscous evolution of circumstellar disks (v1); 1st prize in poster competition - NOVA Network 2 Meeting
UvA API, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 14 February 2017
Presentation: The viscous evolution of protoplanetary disks inside young star clusters - 2nd Dutch Star Cluster Meeting
UvA API, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 3 February 2017
Presentation: Evolution of circumstellar disks in young stellar clusters

The traditional NAC poster prize!
Outreach & writing
Primer Fotón
Since June 2015 I run a blog in Spanish called Primer Fotón, which in English means First Photon. I cover the subjects of astronomy and computer science and it is aimed to the general public, focusing on simple explanations of phenomena and scientific developments. I have also been developing the Primer Fotón podcast, where I comment different astronomical news. I use the social media accounts of Primer Fotón to share interesting astronomical events that can be easily observed, and I have almost 10.000 followers on its Facebook page. Primer Fotón is part of Red Latinoamericana de Cultura Científica, Latinamerican Network of Scientific Culture, a platform for latin american bloggers working on science outreach. Since October 2016 I am also part of the directory of the Network.
Astronomy on Tap Leiden

Presenting at different Astronomy on Tap Leiden events
A few months after starting my PhD in Leiden I became part of the group organizing Astronomy on Tap events in our town. Astronomy on Tap is an outreach initiative started in New York in 2013 that brings professional scientists to local bars to share their knowledge with the public. Together with an amazing group of people, we bring Astronomy on Tap Leiden the last Monday of every month to Grand Café de Burcht in the city center.
Observatorio Astronómico Andino

At Observatorio Astronómico Andino with former president of Chile Michelle Bachelet
From September 2012 to August 2016 I was an astronomer at Observatorio Astronómico Andino, a beautiful touristic astronomical observatory close to Santiago de Chile. There I had the chance to give astronomy talks to all kinds of people, ranging from middle school kids to Chile’s former president, Michelle Bachelet. The tour consisted in an introductory talk about astronomical objects, looking at the sky with naked eye and learning to recognize constellations and other properties such as the color of the stars, and then observations with binoculars and telescopes up to 14” in size. We also performed demonstrations of astrophotography, and you can see some of my (very amateur) images here. Working at the OAA was a very important step in realizing how amazing it is to share astronomy with the public.
Escéptica
My beginning as a science writer was on Escéptica, the Spanish version of Skepchick. From August 2011 to February 2012 I collaborated with a few articles in Spanish, spanning different subjects (strangely so, not astronomy). These are not my best articles but they hold a dear place in my heart, since they were the first ones I ever published. You can see my articles on Escéptica here.