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Andrés Escala
Associate Professor
Background & Contact Information
Dr. en Cs. en Astronomía, 2004, Universidad de Chile, Chile. Ph.D. in Astrophysics, 2004, Yale University, CT, USA. Postdoctoral Associate: 2004-2006, Centro de Astrofísica FONDAP, Universidad de Chile, Chile. Research Associate: 2006-2009, Kavli Institute for Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology, Stanford University, CA, USA.
Research Topics:Massive Black Hole Formation and Evolution, Galaxy/Star Formation, Mathematical Formulation of Empirical Laws.
Areas of interest
My current interests are focused primarily on the formation of celestial objects, by means of N-body+Hydro numerical simulations studies of these systems, using state of art codes (GADGET, ENZO, RAMSES, NBODY6, etc). Problems studied include the formation of black hole seeds by cloud collapse and runaway stellar collisions, cosmological growth and evolution by massive black hole mergers and/or gas accretion, star formation laws in galaxies and cluster formation in galactic mergers. More recently, I have been expanding my interests beyond theoretical astrophysics, studying the proper mathematical formulation of empirical laws. I reformulated the empirical metabolic rate relation in living organisms and currently, I’m studying its implications for total lifespan energy consumption, ontogenetic growth and the laws of population ecology.
Biography
Andrés Escala Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Yale University and Dr. en Cs. from Universidad de Chile. Afterwards he held a Postdoctoral position at Universidad de Chile and a Research Associate position at Stanford University. Since July 2009. Dr. Escala works as a Professor at the Astronomy Department at Universidad de Chile. Currently, he is an Associate Professor (2015 to date).
Along with a strong research program focused on (small scale) Structure Formation (see the section above), since the beginning of his position at Universidad de Chile, Dr. Escala has been particularly active in administrative instances, those includes been (between 2015 and 2020) vice-Director and the Director at the Department of Astronomy, as well as director of the Franco-Chilean Lab for Astronomy (UMI, CNRS, France).
He is a member of the Chilean and American Astronomical Societies (SOCHIAS and AAS).
Along with a strong research program focused on (small scale) Structure Formation (see the section above), since the beginning of his position at Universidad de Chile, Dr. Escala has been particularly active in administrative instances, those includes been (between 2015 and 2020) vice-Director and the Director at the Department of Astronomy, as well as director of the Franco-Chilean Lab for Astronomy (UMI, CNRS, France).
He is a member of the Chilean and American Astronomical Societies (SOCHIAS and AAS).
Courses, Projects, Recent Publications
- Mechanics
- Theory of Galaxies,
- Introductory Physics
- Stellar Dynamics
- Introduction to Astrophysics
