Science

My scientific interest is structures. How the stuff is organized from simple to complex. 

Now I'm working as a PhD student in Heidelberg University via IMPRS HGSFP ZAH-ITA under the supervision of Ralf Klessen. 

And my topic is the first stars.

The start of a light

Imagine the Universe before any stars existed - no light, no metals, just dark matter and hydrogen floating in the cosmic void. Then, from this darkness, the first stars ignited. These stars (called Population III, or Pop III) were short-lived, and powerful enough to completely reshape the Universe: they exploded as supernovae produced the first heavy elements, and set the rules for everything that formed after them. 

We’ve never seen a Pop III star directly - they’re long gone - but we can simulate their birth and their influence on outer space, calibrate to what we see in the Universe now. That’s where A-SLOTH comes in: a semi-analytic model that lets us rewind the Universe and follow how the first halos and stars formed, lived, died, and enriched space for the next generations. It’s like being a cosmic detective: the first stars are gone, but the clues they left behind are everywhere.

The Time Capsules of the Solar System

Before my dive into the very early Universe, I studied something much closer to home: asteroids. 

Asteroids are random rocks in space, but they are actually some of the most scientifically valuable objects in the Solar System. They are leftovers from the time our planets were forming - untouched, unchanged, and full of chemical and dynamical history. How asteroid families formed, how their orbits evolve over millions of years, how subtle forces like the Yarkovsky effect slowly “push” asteroids around, and what all this tells us about the early Solar System.

If early stars are the “origin story” of the Universe, asteroids are the “origin story” of us - of the environment where Earth eventually formed.

In the end, all my interests boil down to one question: how does simplicity turn into complexity? How do quiet, structureless beginnings - hydrogen atoms, dark-matter halos, cold rocks - evolve into stars, planets, galaxies, and eventually us? I’m fascinated by this transformation: the Universe starting out boring and uniform, and through physics alone erupting into THIS. 

Emergence. From simple to complex. From building blocks to everything we see now. From boring to chaos. How, from nothing, do we have everything?

And astrophobia. 😄

With existential horror of the realization that nothing actually explains what we see around, and not understanding what's going on and why.  I'm envious of religious guys, no joke

My list of publications is HERE