08.03.2024
Female scientists in spotlight: astrophysicist Sylvia Ploeckinger
To mark International Women's Day 2024, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) spotlights female scientists who are making significant contributions to research. Among them is Sylvia Ploeckinger, an astrophysicist and a VSC user.
The universe is expanding and so does our understanding of it – thanks to outstanding researchers who peer into the hidden corners of the universe and push the boundaries of the unknown. One of the scientists working in this field is Sylvia Ploeckinger from the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Vienna.
In her work, Ploeckinger studies theories in cosmology, and the formation and development of galaxies. The undertaking involves complex large-scale cosmological simulations on the Vienna Scientific Cluster. The calculations run on thousands of processors for months and model the evolution of tens of thousands of resolved galaxies over more than 13 billion years.
Research on dark matter
Recently, Ploeckinger was awarded the Fellowship of the Elise Richter Program for Senior Postdocs of the FWF. With this grant, she will work on a project to investigate how galaxies can help us understand the type of dark matter present in the universe. This way, researchers can test whether the effects of the different hypothetical dark matter particles (cold, warm, or self-interacting dark matter) are present in various galactic properties.
Dark matter makes up about 27% of the matter in the universe and we know very little about it. This project aims to bring more light into this very elusive but important component of our universe.
On International Women's Day 2024, FWF published an interview with Sylvia Ploeckinger, asking her about her love for science and the biggest challenges in her career. You can read it here (in German).
Sylvia Ploeckinger uses Vienna Scientific Cluster for complex cosmological simulations © FWF/Luiza Puiu