At the Institut national de physique nucléaire et de physique des
particules (IN2P3)
I was scientific director and as such responsible for the domain of
computing and data science. In this position I was especially interested
in
maintaining and advancing a strong computing infrastructure for IN2P3, and
to support research activities in computing and data science. In the context of this
position I was a member of CERN's LHC
Experiments Committee (LHCC) and chief reviewer of CERN's Worldwide Large Hadron
Collider Computing Grid (WLCG).
In order to provide more publication possibilities for researchers and engineers in the domain between
computing and (astro)particle physics, we have launched in 2017 the journal Computing and Software for Big Science, and I am editor-in-chief for this journal.
My scientific interests in astrophysics are related to the high-energy sky and I have been studying hard X-ray sources using (among others) the instruments of ESA's INTEGRAL mission. Especially I am interested in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and X-ray binaries. In 2009 we have finished the work on the Second INTEGRAL AGN Catalogue, containing 200 objects. I have studied several AGN in greater detail, like NGC 2992, NGC 4388, NGC 4151, and Centaurus A.
In 2012 Wiley published our text book
During my PhD I have been working on luminosity
functions of X-ray selected BL Lacertae objects and I studied
their evolutionary behaviour. This project was
also the main reason for my research activities in 1999 and 2000 at the Osservatorio
Astronomico di Brera in Milan (Italy), where I have been working with BL Lac spectra,
taken with the BeppoSAX
satellite.
Another project was to determine the local (z < 0.07) luminosity function
of Seyfert 2 galaxies, using objective-prism-plates of the Hamburg/ESO-Survey (HES).
Results from the BL Lac project
and from the Seyfert II research can be found in my publications and also in my