Habilitation for HITSter Fabian Schneider

Dr. Fabian Schneider successfully completed the habilitation process at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Heidelberg University.

Fabian Schneider has spent his career investigating the turbulent lives of massive stars. The astrophysicist conducted research as a “Hintze Research Fellow” at Oxford University after earning his doctorate in Bonn, received a postdoctoral research fellowship at Christ Church College (also in Oxford), and then joined the Center for Astronomy at Heidelberg University as a Gliese Fellow. While in Heidelberg, Fabian Schneider was also a visiting scientist at HITS in the PSO group headed by Friedrich Röpke. In October 2019, he published a study in “Nature” on the origin of magnetic fields in stellar mergers, together with colleagues from Garching and Oxford.

 In 2020, he was awarded a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC) and decided to choose HITS as the host institution for his new group. This grant by the ERC of about €1.5 million allowed him to establish his junior research group on Stellar Evolution Theory (SET). In 2021, the Astronomische Gesellschaft (AG) recognized his work in studying the evolution of massive stars, binary stars, and supernovae with the Ludwig Biermann Award for outstanding young researchers. His ongoing contribution in the field of theoretical and computational astrophysics led to the fourth habilitation ever attained by a HITSter.