Luis Goicoechea
Luis J. Goicoechea was born in 1957, a few months before the launch of the Sputnik 1.
He got a physics degree from the Universidad de Cantabria (UC) in 1979, and started his research career as fellow of the CIDS (joint center of the Spanish Scientific Research Council and the UC), FPI fellow and assistant professor. His PhD thesis dealt with observations in some inhomogeneous cosmological models. After a post-doc stay at the University of Rome, his daughter Estela was born and he got a position of professor of Theoretical Physics. Since the 90s, he is working on the field of astronomy and astrophysics, establishing solid ties with related groups at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (which has visited on numerous occasions) and several institutes abroad. Nowadays, he is professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the UC.
He has spent much of past 25 years studying extragalactic lens systems. In more detail, his research has been focused on the observation and interpretation of distant (background) quasars strongly affected by the gravitational field of foreground galaxies.
This ongoing project is called Gravitational LENses and DArk Matter (GLENDAMA), and is currently using state-of- the-art instrumentation to create a high-quality database of gravitationally lensed quasars (http://grupos.unican.es/glendama/database/). The
major facilities involved in the project are the Liverpool (robotic) Telescope y el Gran Telescopio CANARIAS, both located at the Canary island of La Palma (Spain).