Petra Awad

        Astrophysicist, PhD

       

Biography

Hi there,

My name is Petra Awad, I am an astronomer from Lebanon, currently based in the Netherlands. I am a postdoctoral scientist and developer for the Euclid telescope Near-Infrared (NIR) pipeline at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. As part of the Euclid science ground segment, my main job is to improve the processing of NIR images resulting in better quality data for the upcoming data releases.

Prior to that,

I attained my PhD degree at the University of Groningen where I graduated with cum laude distinction for my thesis titled "From the Large-Scale Structure to the Milky Way halo". My work involved studying filamentary astrophysical structures including cosmic filaments as well as stellar streams within the Milky Way halo.


I attained my M.Sc in physics at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland with a thesis focused on probing compact dark matter objects using the microlensing signal from systems of strongly lensed quasars. For my B.Sc, I majored in physics at the American University of Beirut (AUB) back home in Lebanon. There, I also attained minors in mathematics and computational science.


Aside from my work, I enjoy cooking, learning new languages, progressive metal and rock, and reading any book I can get my hands on. Feel free to share your music preferences with me and don't be shy to ask for recommendations!

Research: Overview of my scientific interests

I - Software development for the Euclid Pipeline

I am part of the team of developers working on the Near-Infrared (NIR) pipeline for processing NIR images that the Euclid telescope captures and that will be made available to the public for the up-coming data releases. I am interested in making the data more suitable for low-surface brightness science and in the reduction of persistence effects that affect the NIR images. Below are some images that were part of the Euclid Early Release Observations (ERO).


Figure 1

Figure 1. Euclid's first images. Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi.


II - Cosmic filament tracing

My main research interest lies in the domain of the Large-Scale Structure or the Cosmic Web. My main goal is to trace cosmic filaments within cosmological simulations and in wide survey observations such as 2MASS, DESI, or Euclid in the future, as well as to map the dynamics and flow of matter surrounding these filaments. Mapping this flow increases our knowledge of how the Cosmic Web has come to form and how the properties of the galaxies that inhabit it depend on their cosmic environments. The figure below shows a snapshot of the Large-Scale Structure produced using the FLAMINGO simulations.


Figure 2

Figure 2. Map of cold dark matter surface density within the FLAMINGO simulation. Credits: The Flamingo team and the Virgo Consortium.


III - Characterization of Milky Way stellar streams

I am also interested in looking at the tidal debris of past mergers with the Milky Way which mostly manifest as elongated co-moving distributions of stars known as stellar streams. Finding and characterizing the morphology of these streams provides critical information about our galaxy and its formation history. Below is a figure from Awad et al. (2024) where we confirmed two overdensities in the proper motion space of a stellar stream named Jhelum and used the stars within these two overdensities to provide further information about the possible origin of this stream.


Figure 3

Figure 3. Highlighted members of the Jhelum stellar stream using ant-colony optimization- based techniques. Credits: Figure is extracted from Awad et al. (2024).

Publications: The full list can be found on the ADS

PhD thesis

  • From the Large-Scale Structure to the Milky Way halo: Machine Learning techniques for structure detection and analysis
    Awad, P. (2024) PhD thesis, University of Groningen
    DOI: 10.33612/diss.1085254815

As first author

  • S5: New insights from deep spectroscopic observations of the tidal tails of the globular clusters NGC 1261 and NGC 1904
    Awad, P., Li, T. S., Erkal, D., Peletier, R. F., Bunte, K., Koposov, S. E., Li, A., Balbinot, E., Smith, R., Canducci, M., Tino, P., Senkevich, A. M., Cullinane, L. R., Da Costa, G. S., Ji, A. P., Kuehn, K., Lewis, G. F., Pace, A. B., Zucker, D. B., Bland-Hawthorn, J., Limberg, G., Martell, S. L., McKenzie, M., Yang, Y., & Usman, S. A Astronomy & Astrophysics.
    DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202451930
  • Swarming in stellar streams: Unveiling the structure of the Jhelum stream with ant-colony-inspired computation
    Awad, P., Canducci, M., Balbinot, E., Viswanathan, A., Woudenberg, H. C., Koop, O., Peletier, R. F., Tino, P., Starkenburg, E., Smith, R. J. E., & Bunte, K. (2024). Astronomy & Astrophysics 683, A14.
    DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202347848
  • Probing compact dark matter objects with microlensing in gravitationally lensed quasars
    Awad, P., Chan, J., Millon, M., Courbin, F., & Paic, E. (2023). Astronomy & Astrophysics, 673, A88.
    DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202245615
  • Swarm-intelligence-based extraction and manifold crawling along the Large-Scale Structure
    Awad, P., Peletier, R. F., Canducci, M., Smith, R. J. E., Taghribi, A., Mohammadi, M., Shin, J., Tino, P., & Bunte, K. (2023). Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 520(3), 4517–4539.
    DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad428

As second author

  • Large-scale structure around the Fornax-Eridanus Complex
    Raj, M. A., Awad, P., Peletier, R. F., Smith, R. J. E., Kuchner, U., van de Weygaert, R., Libeskind, N. I., Canducci, M., Tino, P., & Bunte, K. (2024). Astronomy & Astrophysics 690, A92.
    DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202450815
  • 1-DREAM: 1D Recovery, Extraction and Analysis of Manifolds in noisy environments
    Canducci, M., Awad, P., Taghribi, A., Mohammadi, M., Mastropietro, M., De Rijcke, S., Peletier, R. F., Smith, R. J. E., Bunte, K., & Tino, P. (2022). Astronomy and Computing, 41, 100658.
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ascom.2022.100658

As N-th author

  • Euclid Quick Data Release (Q1) - The role of cosmic connectivity in shaping galaxy clusters
    Euclid Collaboration: Gouin, C., Laigle, C., Sarron, F., Bonnaire, T., Sorce, J. G., Aghanim, N., Magliocchetti, M., Quilley, L., Boldrini, P., Durret, F., Pichon, C., Kuchner, U., Malavasi, N., Kraljic, K., Gavazzi, R., Kang, Y., Stanford, S. A., Awad, P., et al. (2025). Astronomy & Astrophysics.
    DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2503.15332
  • Euclid Quick Data Release (Q1) – NIR processing and data products
    Euclid Collaboration: Polenta, G., Frailis, M., Alavi, A., Appleton, P. N., Awad, P., et al. (2025). Astronomy & Astrophysics.
    DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2503.15304
  • Asymmetry at Low Surface Brightness as an Indicator of Environmental Processes in the Fornax Cluster
    Xu, X., Peletier, R. F., Awad, P., Raj, M. A., Smith, R. (2025). Astronomy & Astrophysics.
    DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202452627
  • Euclid: Early Release Observations – Overview of the Perseus cluster and analysis of its luminosity and stellar mass functions
    Euclid Collaboration: Cuillandre, J.-C., Bolzonella, M., Boselli, A., Marleau, F. R., Mondelin, M., Sorce, J. G., Stone, C., Buitrago, F., Cantiello, M., George, K., Hatch, N. A., Quilley, L., Mannucci, F. , Saifollahi, T., S´anchez- Janssen, R., Tarsitano, F., Tortora, C., Xu, X., Bouy, H., Gwyn, S., Kluge, M., Lanc¸ on, A., Laureijs, R., Schirmer, M., Abdurro’uf, Awad, P., et al. (2024). Astronomy & Astrophysics.
    DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2405.13501
  • Euclid: Early Release Observations – Program overview and pipeline for compact- and diffuse-emission photometry
    Euclid Collaboration: Cuillandre, J.-C., Bertin, E., Bolzonella, M., Bouy, H., Gwyn, S., Isani, S., Kluge, M., Lai, O., Lanc¸ on, A., Lang, D. A., Laureijs, R., Saifollahi, T., Schirmer, M., Stone, C., Abdurro’uf, Aghanim, N., Altieri, B., Annibali, F., Atek, H., Awad, P., et al. (2024). Astronomy & Astrophysics.
    DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2405.13496
  • CAVITY, Calar Alto Void Integral-field Treasury surveY and project extension
    Cavity Collaboration: P´erez, I. , Verley, S. , S´anchez-Menguiano, L. , Ruiz-Lara, T., Garc´ıa-Benito, R., Duarte Puertas, S., Jim´enez, A., Dom´ınguez-G ´omez, J., Espada, D., Peletier, R. F., Rom´an, J., Rodr´ıguez, M. I., S´anchez Alarc ´on, P., Argudo-Fern´andez, M., Torres-R´ıos, G., Bidaran, B., Alc´azar-Laynez, M., van de Weygaert, R., S´anchez, S.F., Lisenfeld, U., Zurita, A., Florido, E., van der Hulst, J.M., Bl´azquez-Calero, G., Villalba-Gonz´alez, P., del Moral-Castro, I., Lugo-Aranda, A., Walo-Mart´ın, D., Conrado, A., Gonz´alez Delgado, R., Falc ´on-Barroso, J., Ferr´e-Mateu, A., Hern´andez-S´anchez, M., Awad, P. et al. (2024). Astronomy & Astrophysics 689, A213.
    DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202449749

Contact

For further contact, you can find me here.

Work address

Leiden University, Gorleus building, Einsteinweg 55, 2333 CC Leiden, The Netherlands

Email

pawad[at]strw.leidenuniv.nl