Exploring the first billion years of cosmic history
Hannah Übler receives ERC Starting Grant
MPE congratulates Hannah Übler who was awarded an ERC Starting Grant to investigate the emergence of galaxies and massive black holes during the first few billion years of cosmic history with her project “APEX”. She will begin her research at the infrared/submm astronomy group in November.
The first stars must have started the generation of heavy elements and the formation of the first galaxies in the earliest phases of the Universe. At the same epoch, the seeds of the supermassive black holes which are detected in the centres of all nearby massive galaxies, including our own Milky Way, must have formed. Up until recently, observational access to this early period was extremely limited. Since 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened a new window into the first billion years of cosmic time through unprecedented, sensitive high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy.
As principal investigator (PI) of two open-time campaigns with the NIRSpec Integral-Field Spectrograph (IFS) on board JWST (184h) and as co-lead of the 300h NIRSpec guaranteed observing time survey GA-NIFS, Hannah Übler will address fundamental questions about the first ionising sources and their physical properties in the young Universe. Leveraging the imaging-spectroscopic capabilities of NIRSpec-IFS, the APEX team will search for the distinctive spectral signatures of active massive black holes and the first generation of stars, and map the kinematics and physical conditions in early galaxies. In comparison with simulations, these novel data will help to improve theoretical models of the early Universe.
Supported by an Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), she will begin her poject “APEX” (Active galactic nuclei and Population III stars in early galaxies) in November at the Infrared/Submm Astronomy Group to investigate the emergence of galaxies and massive black holes during the first few billion years of cosmic history. Her program complements and expands the world-leading research on galaxy evolution at MPE.
Hannah Übler received her PhD from the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich working at MPE. Prior to the start of her ERC research group at MPE, she was a Newton-Kavli Fellow at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology and the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK.
About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council.
