Diego F. Torres

Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (CSIC - ICE)

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

I was born in Argentina, where I studied up to obtaining a PhD from the National University at La Plata. After several fellowships (Sussex University, Inst. for Radioastronomy, Princeton University, Lawrence Livermore Natl. Lab.) and long stays in Italy, I started a new group on high-energy astrophysics in Barcelona. I have received several scientific awards (among them, the Chinese Academy of Science Senior Visiting Professorship in 2014/15, the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award of the Humboldt Foundation of Germany in 2012, the Shakti Duggal Award on Cosmic Ray Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics in 2007, and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006). I have published 220+ papers, which have  10700+ citations. These papers can be accessed from ADS (http://bit.ly/1f9pno4) I edited 5 books.


Research interests

The familiar sights of peacefully shining stars would be replaced by something extreme and variable should you look with gamma-ray eyes. You would be glancing at the most energetic phenomena known in astrophysics: accreting masses around black holes, pulsars, close binaries, regions of stellar formation, explosions of supernovae, and others. I develop theoretical models for these scenarios, and test them with observations using ground-based telescopes and satellites. My research group hosted about 30 scientists and published more than 250 papers since its foundation in 2006. You can know more about this all from my webpage,  http://www.ice.csic.es/personal/dtorres

Selected publications

– Ahnen ML et al. (including Torres DF) 2016, ‘Super-orbital variability of LS I+61 degrees 303 at TeV energies’, Astronomy & Astrophysics, 591, A76.

– Li J,Torres DF, de Ona Wilhelmi E, Rea N & Martin J 2016, ‘Gamma-ray emission from PSR J0007+7303 using seven years of FERMI-LAT observations’, Astrophysical Journal, 831, 1, 19.

– Campana S, Coti Zelati F, Papitto A, Rea N, Torres DF, Baglio MC & D’Avanzo P 2016, ‘A physical scenario for the high and low X-ray luminosity states in the transitional pulsar PSR J1023+0038’, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Volume 594, id.A31, 7 pp.

– Martín J, Torres DF & Pedaletti G 2016, ‘Molecular environment, reverberation, and radiation from the pulsar wind nebula in CTA 1’, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 459, Issue 4, p.3868-3879.

– de Ona Wilhelmi E, Papitto A, Li J, Rea N, Torres DF, Burderi L, Di Salvo R, Iaria R, Riggio A & Sanna A 2016, SAX J1808.4-3658, an accreting millisecond pulsar shining in gamma rays?, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 456, 3, 2647 – 2653.

– The MAGIC Collaboration (including Torres DF) 2016, ‘Teraelectronvolt pulsed emission from the Crab pulsar detected by MAGIC’, Astronomy & Astrophysics, 585, A133.


Selected research activities

-Have published 11 papers in international journals with small groups of authors or with significant responsibilities within larger collaborations.

-Since March 2016, I am Director, Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC).

-Editor-in-Chief, Journal of High Energy Astrophysics, Elsevier.

-Director, Sant Cugat Forum on Astrophysics (2 workshops were hosted there this year).

-Member of CTA, Fermi-LAT, and MAGIC collaborations.

-Have been an evaluator for projects or promotions of six countries and a peer reviewer for several astrophysical journals.