The Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) is a Portuguese research institute for astronomy and space science. It grew out of the astrophysics centres of the universities of Porto and Lisbon and has teams in both cities. FCT, the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, is the national public agency that funds research in Portugal, from doctoral fellowships to research projects and computing time.
IA was announced on 29 October 2014 as the merger of the Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto (CAUP) and the Centro de Astronomia e Astrofísica da Universidade de Lisboa (CAAUL). The University of Porto was established on 22 March 1911 with two faculties, Sciences and Medicine. FCT is a special public institute under the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation and supports research in all areas of knowledge.
Where I come in
I took my BSc in Physics and MSc in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Porto's Faculty of Sciences, which gave me its Best Master's Student in Astronomy and Astrophysics award in 2023. I have worked at IA since 2021, first as an MSc research fellow and, from September 2022, as a PhD researcher in the stellar astrophysics group. FCT paid my doctoral fellowship from September 2025 to August 2026; since September 2026 my PhD has been funded by a fellowship from the FCT project ArqueoGal.