Research Group — Active Members
Aurora de los Ángeles 'Gely' Durán
Gely is a PhD student at UNAM working on the overall structure of the L1551 IRS5 protostars from ALMA observations obtained as part of the large ALMA program FAUST. She is particularly interested in the effect of the outflow activity from the central binary on the structure of the inner envelope.
Adrien J. Feliz Cabreja
Adrien is an undergraduate student at the University of Massachusetts in Boston majoring in physics and pursuing a research career in astrophysics. He is working on VLA observations of nearby stars known to harbor planetary systems.
Ernesto García Valencia
Ernesto is a PhD student at the University of Sonora working on the radio properties of stars in the Chamaeleon star-forming region. He obtained and analyzed both conventional interferometry observations with ATCA and long baseline data with the LBA. His works represents the most complete radio study of the Chamaeleon region to date.
Brissa Gómez Miller
Brissa is a PhD student at UNAM working on EHT observations of the blazar PKS1335-127 which recently underwent a strong gamma-ray flare. The EHT images she will obtain of PKS1337-127 will be the highest resolution observations ever made of that target. She is also interested in the correlation of EHT data and regularly spends time at the correlation center of the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, Germany.
Ricardo Hernández Garnica
Ricardo is a PhD student at UNAM focusing on the analysis of orbital motions in young stellar systems using VLA and ALMA archival and proprietary observations. He has obtained the best characterization to date of the orbit of the well-known Class I object L1551 IRS5 in Taurus.
Jazmín Ordoñez Toro
Jazmín obtained her PhD at UNAM in March 2025 with research focusing on the analysis of young, compact, multiple stellar system using multi-epoch VLBA observations. She has recently shown that the brightest and most massive stellar system in Ophiuchus, S1, is about 20% less massive than theoretical evolutionary models would predict. She is currently working on additional systems in Ophiuchus and Serpens.
Erick Marco Peredo Hervas
Erick is an undergraduade physics major at the Universidad Mayor de San Simon in Cochabamba, Bolivia. For his thesis, he is focusing on the young stellar object V773 Tau, a quadruple system in the Taurus star-forming region. He is combining astrometric and spectroscopic observations to model the orbital motions and determine the masses of the individual stars in the system.
Eduardo Quiros
Eduardo graduated as a physics major at the Universidad Mayor de San Simon in Cochabamba, Bolivia. His undergraduate thesis, defended in March 2025, was devoted to the identification of radio-bright nearby stars in the FIRST VLA survey. He has developed a novel technique to search for stars directly the radio images which proved more effective than using catalogs. He was just admitted to the graduate program in astrophysics at UNAM and will start with the Masters coursework in the Fall.
Adriana Vazquez Barrios
Adriana graduated as a physics major at the Universidad Mayor de San Simon in Cochabamba, Bolivia. For her undergraduate thesis, defended in March 2025, she identified radio-bright nearby stars in the VLA Sky Survey by cross-matching the VLASS Quick Look and Gaia catalogs. She also investigated the relationship between stellar radio brightness and location on the HR diagram.
José Armando Yucra
José Armando graduated as a physics major at the Universidad Mayor de San Simon in Cochabamba, Bolivia. His undergraduate thesis, defended in July 2025, was devoted to the study of the correlation between radio and X-ray emission in nearby radio-bright stars. Specifically, he revised a correlation initially identified by Güdel and Benz in the 1990s using greatly larger samples and modern X-ray observations.
Research Group — Past Members
Dante Peñaloza
For his Masters thesis, defended at UNAM in February 2025, Dante studied the broadening mechanisms of hydrogen recombination lines in the high-mass young star MWC 349A. Using observations obtained with the 100-m radiotelescope in Germany, he recently demonstrated that, for quantum numbers between 50 and 100, the linewidths increase monotonically as expected from pressure broadening.
Karla Noemí Moo Herrera
Karla graduated from Universidad Autónoma de Yucatan in Merida, Mexico, with a major in physical engineering. During a two semester internship in 2024/25, Karla worked on a reanalysis of a large body of astrometric observations of young stars in the Orion region to obtain their distance through an MCMC fitting of their annual parallax.
Antonio Hernández
Antonio obtained his PhD jointly at UNAM and the University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France, in January 2019 with research focusing on the physical and chemical properties of the protostar IRAS16293-2422. After graduating, Antonio was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany, and he is now a research professor at the Technological Institute of Monterrey, Mexico.
Juana Leticia Rivera
Juana Leticia obtained her PhD at UNAM in May 2017 with research focused the origin of Gould's Belt based on accurate VLBI proper motion measurements. She is now a physics instructor at the Universidad del Valle de México and the National University of Mexico.
Gisela Ortiz León
Gerardo obtained her PhD at UNAM in January 2017 with research focused entirely on VLBI applications, both for astrometry as part of the GOBELINS project and for black hole imaging. In particular she published the first science-grade VLBI observations collected on the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serano. Gisela's thesis quality was recognized by the 2017 IAU PhD Prize. After graduating, Gisela was a Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany. She is currently a research professor at the National Institute for Astronomy, Optics and Electronics (INAOE) in Puebla, Mexico.
Gerardo Pech Castillo
Gerardo obtained his undergraduate degree in November 2008 at the Autonomous University of Yucatan, with a thesis focusing on the outflows in the young stellar object IRAS16293-2422, and his PhD at UNAM in February 2016 with research on wide-area VLA mapping of the Perseus star-forming regions to identify targets for the GOBELINS survey. After graduating, Gerardo held leadership positions in several planetariums and he is currently a member of the Science and Technology Council of the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Sergio Dzib Quijano
Antonio obtained his PhD at UNAM in December 2013 with research focusing on early astrometric observations of young stellar systems as well as VLA wide-area mapping of nearby star-forming regions to identify targets for the GOBELINS survey. After graduating, Sergio held postdoctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany, and the Institute for Millimeter Radio Astronomy (IRAM) in Grenoble, France. He is currently a long-term researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy.
Erandy González
For her bachelor thesis in applied mathematics, defended in October 2009 at the Technological University of la Mixteca in Oaxaca, Erandy developed a Bayesian code to fit VLBI astrometric observations.
Rosa Martha Torres López
Rosy obtained her PhD at UNAM in September 2009 with research focusing on early astrometric VLBI observations of young stellar systems. This work initiated much of the astrometric research we carried out in subsequent years. After graduating, Rosy was a postdoctoral researcher at Bonn University and she is now a professor at the Institute of Astronomy and Meteorology of the University of Guadalajara.
Mónica Rodríguez
Mónica obtained her PhD at UNAM in September 2008 with research, mostly carried out at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA, focusing on the large-scale interstellar medium in galaxies. After graduating, Mónica was a postdoctoral researcher in Granada, Spain and Paris, France.
Guillermo Manjarrez Esquivel
For his masters thesis, defended at UNAM in September 2008, Guillermo analyzed VLA observations of the dense core L1517B and combined these interferometric data with single-dish observation to recover the full dense material distribution. He continued with a PhD at the Institute of Astronomy of Andalucia in Granada, Spain.
Virgilio Vázquez
For his bachelor thesis, defended in September 2006 at the Technological University of la Mixteca in Oaxaca, Virgilio developed a code to fit VLBI astrometric observations. He continued with a Masters and PhD in applied mathematics at CIMAT, Guanajuato, and is now a professor in applied maths at the Technological University of la Mixteca.
Susana Pacheco
For her bachelor thesis, defended in May 2006 at the "Benemerita" University of Puebla, Susana worked on the circumstellar disk of the young stellar source HH24MMS. She continued with a PhD thesis at Alpes University in Grenoble, France, and then switched to data science in the private sector.
Brenda Carolina Arias Martín
For her bachelor thesis, defended in May 2003 at the University of Guadalajara, Brenda worked on using sulfur-bearing molecules as potential chemical clocks in protostellar outflow. She went on to obtain a Masters in education and communication technologies and is now head of public outreach at the Institute of Astronomy of UNAM in Mexico City.