The Rise of the Milky Way

João Alves is a professor of stellar astrophysics at the University of Vienna, in Austria. His primary research interest is to understand how diffuse interstellar gas clouds form, evolve, and eventually collapse to form stars and planets. He is excited about the exploration of the European Space Agency’s newly released Gaia satellite data, the upcoming European Extremely Large Telescope, and the search for intelligent life in the universe.

During his Radcliffe fellowship, João Alves plans to construct the most accurate map of the local neighborhood (3,000-light-year radius). Combining both space and ground-based observational data, he plans to build the first map of the space motion of gas and investigate how giant gas clouds, the nurseries of stars, came to be.

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