Dante Minniti

Dante Minniti is Professor and Director of the Astrophysics Doctorate at Universidad Andrés Bello, Chile.

Until 2014 he was Professor at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile. He did the undergraduate studies in Astronomy at the Universidad de Córdoba (Argentina), and obtained his PhD in 1993 at the University of Arizona (USA) and on 1998, another PhD at the Universidad de Córdoba (Argentina). He was Postdoctoral Fellow of the European Southern Observatory in1993-1996, and a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Postdoctoral Fellow in 1996-1998. He is a member of the MACHO Collaboration since 1996, and of the SuperMACHO Collaboration since 2001.

He has obtained several international research grants from NASA (USA), ALFA (European Union), CONICYT (Chile), CONICET (Argentina), CNRS (France), ICTP (Italy), etc. He was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship Prize in 2005 in recognition for his work on stellar populations, and the Scopus Prize in Physics and Astronomy in 2008. That year he was also appointed Adjunct Scholar for the Vatican Observatory, and Director of Research and Doctorate at the Universidad Católica. He is also referee for the leading journals in Astronomy, and for national and international funding agencies, and has been member of various scientific committees, such as the Scientific and Technology Committee and Observing Proposals Committee of the European Southern Observatory, and the Gemini International Telescope Allocation Committee.

His broad research interests are:

EXTRASOLAR PLANETS
GLOBULAR CLUSTERS
STELLAR POPULATIONS
STELLAR EVOLUTION
GRAVITATIONAL MICROLENSING
GALAXY FORMATION
GALACTIC STRUCTURE

Dante is President of the IAU Scientific Body “Commission H1 The Local Universe” and has been an active member of several IAU commissions since 2003.

He is author of the book “Mundos Lejanos” and of 532 refereed publications, that accumulate more than 18.000 citations in the literature to date, yielding Hirsch_index = 73 (source: ADS). He is now leading the ESO Public Survey “VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV)” and it’s extension the VVVX, and actively teaching, supervising students and postdocs, and giving public Astronomy talks.

In 2012 professor Minniti was made a member of the National Science Academy of Argentina.

INTITUTIONS

SOME REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS:

Dékány, I.;Minniti, D.; Catelan, M.; Zoccali, M.; Saito, R. K.; Hempel, M.; Gonzalez, O. A.; “VVV Survey Near-infrared Photometry of Known Bulge RR Lyrae Stars: The Distance to the Galactic Center and Absence of a Barred Distribution of the Metal-poor Population”, 2013, Astronomy & Astrophysics,776, 2, L19
Saito, R. K.; Hempel, M.; Minniti, D.; Lucas, P. W.; Rejkuba, M.; Toledo, I.; Gonzalez, O. A.; Alonso-García, J.; Irwin, M.; J. Gonzalez-Solares, E.; Hodgkin, S. T.; Lewis, J. R.; Cross, N.; Ivanov, V. D.; Kerins, E.; Emerson, J. P.; Soto, M.; et. al; “VVV DR1: The first data release of the Milky Way bulge and southern plane from the near-infrared ESO public survey VISTA variables in the Vía Láctea”; 2012, Astronomy & Astrophysics, 537, A107
G. Pietrzyński; I. Thompson; W. Gieren; D. Graczyk; G. Bono; A. Udalski; I. Soszyński; D. Minniti; B. Pilecki, “The dynamical mass of a classical Cepheid variable star in an eclipsing binary system”, 2010, Nature, 468, 542
D. Minniti; et al., “Discovery of VVV CL001. A Low-Mass Globular Cluster Next to UKS1 in the Direction of the Galactic Bulge”, 2010, Astronomy & Astrophysics, 527, 81
D. Minniti, P. W. Lucas, J. P. Emerson, et al., 2010, “VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV): The public ESO near-IR variability survey of the Milky Way”, New Astronomy, 15,433
D. Minniti 2007 (book author), “Mundos lejanos: sistemas planetarios y vida en el Universo”, Ediciones B (Santiago, Chile), catalog ISBN 978-956-304-039-5
D. Minniti, J. M. Fernandez, R. Diaz, A. Udalski, G. Pietrzynski, W. Gieren, P. Rojo, M. T. Ruiz, & M. Zoccali, “Millimagnitude Photometry for Transiting Extrasolar Planetary Candidates III: Accurate Radius and Period for OGLE-TR-111-b”, 2006, The Astrophysical Journal, 660, 858
K. Sahu, R. Gilliland, S. Casertano, H. Bond, E. Smith, D. Minniti, M. Zoccali, M. Livio, N. Panagia, J. Valenti, T. Brown, R. Rich, N. Piskunov, S. Luvow, & W. Clarkson, “Extrasolar Transiting Planetary Candidates in the Galactic Bulge”, 2006, Nature, 443, 534
A. Rest, N. B. Suntzeff, K. Olsen, J. L. Prieto, R. C. Smith, D. L. Welch, A. Becker, M. Bergmann, A. Clocchiatti, K. Cook, A. Garg, M. Huber, G. Miknaitis, D. Minniti, S. Nikolaev, C. Stubbs, “Echoes from Ancient Supernovae in the Large Magellanic Cloud”, 2005, Nature, 438, 1132
D. Minniti, M. Rejkuba, J. G. Funes, & R. C. Kennicutt, “The Most Exciting Massive Binary Cluster in NGC~5128: Clues to the Formation of Globular Clusters”, 2004, The Astrophysical Journal, 612, 215
D. Minniti , J. Borissova, M. Rejkuba, D. Alves, K. H. Cook & K. C. Freeman, “Kinematic Evidence for an Old Stellar Halo in the Large Magellanic Cloud”, 2003, Science, 301, 1508
C. Alcock, R.A. Allsman, T.S. Axelrod, A. Becker, D.P. Bennett, K.H. Cook, K.C. Freeman, M. Geha, K. Griest, G. Kovacs, M.J. Lehner, S.L. Marshall, D. Minniti, B.A. Peterson, M.R. Pratt, P.J. Quinn, A.W. Rodgers, C.W. Stubbs, W. Sutherland, & D.L. Welch, “First Direct Detection of a Microlens in the Milky Way”, 2002,Nature, 414, 617
D. Minniti, “Field Stars and Clusters of the Galactic Bulge: Implications for Galaxy Formation”, 1996, The Astrophysical Journal, 459, 175
D. Minniti, “Metal Rich Globular Clusters with R<3 kpc: Disk or Bulge Clusters?”, 1995, The Astronomical Journal, 109, 1663
D. Minniti, E. Olszewski, & M. Rieke, “The Bulge of M33”, 1993,The Astrophysical Journal, 410, L79
D. Minniti, S.D.M. White, E. Olszewski, & J. Hill, “Rotation of the Galactic Bulge”, 1992, The Astrophysical Journal, 393, L47