Dr Ángel López-Sánchez is an astronomer and science communicator working at the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences of the Macquarie University (Sydney, NSW, Australia).
He is a recognised expert in the study of how the gas is converted into stars in nearby galaxies and how this affects galaxy evolution. He leads the “HI KOALA IFS Dwarf galaxy Survey” (Hi-KIDS) program, that uses the instrument 100 at the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) to obtain integral-field spectroscopy (IFS) data of a sample of 80 gas-rich nearby dwarf galaxies. He is the Instrument Scientist of the KOALA integral-field unit at the AAT, and has developed scripts and pipelines to observe, reduce and analyse these IFS data. He also provides support for visiting astronomers to the AAT. He is an active member in large spectroscopic galaxy surveys and upcoming optical and radio galaxy surveys.
He graduated in Theoretical Physics at the University of Granada (2000) and completed his PhD Thesis in Astrophysics at the prestigious “Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias” (IAC, Spain) and the University of La Laguna (Spain) in December 2006. He moved to Australia in 2007, when he joined CSIRO “Astronomy and Space Science” to work on the “Local Volume H I Survey” (LVHIS) program, performing radio-interferometric observations of gas-rich galaxies at the Australian Telescope Compact Array. In 2011 he joined the Australian Astronomical Observatory and Macquarie University combining instrumentation support, research, lecturing, and outreach. He was appointed as a full-time research academic at the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Macquarie University in May 2023.
He is the president of association of Spanish Researcher in Australia-Pacific (SRAP), being one of its founding members, and actively participates in RAICEX (the Network of Associations of Spanish Researchers working abroad) in the commissions of Science Communication and Science Diplomacy. He also drives the academic – industry connection in SRAP. He is vice-president of the Astronomical Association of Córdoba (AAC), representative in the Andalusian Astronomy Network (RAdA) and the Network of Astronomical Associations of Spain , as well as member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the Spanish Astronomy Society (SEA), and the Australian Astronomy Society (ASA).
He is a member of the ProAm Commission (relations between professional astrophysicists and amateur astronomers) of the Spanish Astronomy Society, of which he was the coordinator between 2016 and 2020, and actively participates in connecting the world of professional astrophysics and amateur astronomy.
He is a globally-recognised science communicator, with visibility in Spanish and Australian printed, broadcast, and social media (listed as one of the Top-100 most-followed astrophysicists in Twitter). He is also a passionate amateur astronomer that uses his own equipment for capturing the beauty of the Cosmos. His stunning astronomy time-lapse videos and photos have received +1/2 million views in YouTube and have been seen in TV channels in USA, Australia and Spain, science museums worldwide, and textbooks.
Dr Ángel R. López-Sánchez 