Francisca Kemper

Francisca Kemper

Institut de Ciències de l'Espai

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

After obtaining her Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Amsterdam in 2002, Ciska Kemper moved to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, to take up a Spitzer Fellowship. In 2005 she joined the faculty of University of Virginia, and in 2006 she moved to the UK to take up a faculty position at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. In 2010 she moved to Taiwan for a research faculty position at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of Academia Sinica. In this position she formally joined several telescope projects, including the Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array (ALMA), which ultimately led to her appointment as the European ALMA Programme Scientist at the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, in 2018. In 2022 she joined the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) as an ICREA Research Professor. Ciska Kemper was awarded the Grand Prix Scientifique de la Fondation Franco-Taiwanaise jointly with Suzanne Madden in 2017.

Research interests

Ciska Kemper studies dust properties in order to understand the formation of dust in galaxies. In particular, she uses far-infrared and submillimeter observations of evolved stars and the interstellar medium of nearby galaxies to study the dust emissivity properties at these wavelengths, with the goal to improve on dust mass determinations at all redshifts. She also determines the mineralogical properties of silicate dust -- crystallinity, composition, nanocluster fraction -- in interstellar environments to follow dust formation and evolution.

Selected publications

- Bianchin M, U V, Song Y ... Kemper F et al. 2024, 'GOALS-JWST: Gas Dynamics and Excitation in NGC 7469 Revealed by NIRSpec', The Astrophysical Journal, 965, 103
- Kuchar TA, Sloan GC, Mizuno DR, Kraemer KE, Boyer ML, Groenewegen MAT, Jones OC, Kemper F, Mcdonald I, Oliveira JM, Sewilo M, Srinivasan S, van Loon JT & Zijlstra A 2024, 'SMC-Last Extracted Photometry', The Astronomical Journal, 167, 149
- Habart E, Peeters E, Berné O ... Kemper F et al. 2024, 'PDRs4All II. JWST's NIR and MIR imaging view of the Orion Nebula.', Astronomy & Astrophysics, 685, A73
- Van De Putte D, Meshaka R, Trahin B ... Kemper F et al. 2024, 'PDRs4All VIII. Mid-infrared emission line inventory of the Orion Bar', Astronomy & Astrophysics, 687, A86
- Chown R, Sidhu A, Peeters E ... Kemper F et al. 2024, 'PDRs4All IV. An embarrassment of riches: Aromatic infrared bands in the Orion Bar', Astronomy & Astrophysics, 685, A75
- Choi Y, Kwon W, Pattle K ... Kemper F et al. 2024, 'The JCMT BISTRO Survey: The Magnetic Fields of the IC 348 Star-forming Region', The Astrophysical Journal, 977, 32
- Berné O, Habart E, Peeters E. ... Kemper F et al. 2024, 'A far-ultraviolet–driven photoevaporation flow observed in a protoplanetary disk', Science, 383, 988-992

- Liu D, Saintonge A, Bot C, Kemper F, et al. 2024, 'Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) science: Gas and dust in nearby galaxies' Open Res Europe, 4 - 148.

Selected research activities

In 2024, Ciska Kemper has continued to contribute to the scientific justification to PRIMA, a future infrared mission competing for NASA funding, and to AtLAST, a large single dish submillimeter telescope currently under study. For the latter, she is the lead scientist on behalf of CSIC.
Kemper serves on the NOVA instrument steering committee, which advises the Dutch NOVA organization in their instrumentation projects. The committee meets twice a year. Finally, Kemper was a panelist for the ERC starting grants.