Francisco Najarro
Francisco Najarro graduated in physics (astrophysics) at the Universidad de la Laguna and obtained his PhD in Physics in 1995 at the Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich (Germany) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Rolf P. Kudritzki and Prof. Dr. Reinhard Genzel on ’Quantitative Optical and Infrared Spectroscopy of Extreme Luminous Blue Supergiants’.
After a three years post-doctoral contract at Munich Observatory (USM) he obtained a ’contrato de reincorporación’ at the IEM(CSIC) in 1998 and was awarded a ’Ramón y Cajal’ grant (2001-2006) on the first call of this program, receiveing a positive final I3 evaluation.
In 2006 he obtained a permanent staff position as Científico Titular at CSIC and was promoted to Investigador Científico in 2009. Since 2008 he is based at the Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA), where he is currently the head of the Astrophysics department.
His research activities have been mainly carried out within the field of massive stars and stellar winds. He has demonstrated expertise in multiwavelength spectroscopic studies of these objects from UV to radio, such as pioneering work on infrared studies of massive stars at the galactic center or first spectroscopic optical analysis of a massive star outside the local group. Other astrophysical fields of interests are stellar abundances, clumping, young massive clusters in the Galaxy and beyond, infrared astronomy and space missions.
Since 2005 he is the Spanish Head of Nation within the SAFARI/SPICA consortium and one of the two Co-PIs since 2009, coordinating the Spanish participation in the mission.