Javier Rico
IFAE
Research Interests
I am a staff researcher at the Institut de Fisica d’Altes Energies (IFAE). I completed my Physics degree at the University of Granada (Spain) in 1996, and my PhD at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zürich (Switzerland) in 2002. In 2004 I arrived at IFAE as a postdoctoral fellow, where I was awarded the Juan de la Cierva (2005-2007) and ICREA “junior” (2008-2012) fellowships. Today, I am coordinator of the IFAE Gamma-ray research group, Principal Investigator of the HERD Research Project, and the Analysis and Publications Coordinator of the MAGIC Collaboration.
I am interested in Very High Energy (VHE) Gamma-ray Astronomy. I am member of the MAGIC Collaboration (which operates and exploits two VHE telescopes at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma, Spain) the CTA Consortium (for the construction of the next-generation VHE observatory), and the HERD Collaboration (for the construction of a cosmic-ray/gamma-ray detector onboard the Chinese Space Station). I have focused my research on searches for dark matter particles through the gamma rays produced by their annihilation or decay, using VHE telescopes and advanced statistics and data analysis techniques.
Courses