The GAE, established in the late eighties and recognized as a research group by both the UCM and the Community of Madrid, is a leading group in Very High Energy Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics.

In 2010 GAE joined the Campus of International Excellence – Moncloa, coordinating efforts with other groups to strengthen the Laboratorio de Instrumentación Científica Avanzada – LICA, to develop scientific instrumentation focused on Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics.

Since 2017, the relationship between research groups working in Astrophysics, Cosmology, Nuclear Physics, and Particle Physics has been consolidated at the Faculty of Physics of the UCM, creating the Institute of Particle Physics and Cosmos, IPARCOS www.ucm.es/iparcos, of which the GAE is a founding member.

The group’s senior members lead different activities inside the International projects MAGIC and CTA.

Professor María Victoria Fonseca is chair of the MAGIC Collaboration Board, and Professor José Luis Contreras coordinates the MAGIC telescope’s Onsite Analysis pipeline. Meanwhile, Professor Marcos López is a convener of the Galactic Physics group and responsible for its Monte Carlo simulation software.

Regarding CTA involvement, Professor Juan Abel Barrio coordinates the Trigger & Clock working package in the CTA MST-NectarCAM project. Simultaneously, Professor Contreras has been responsible for the Data Model working group in the Data Management team.

Daniel Nieto, an associated professor and research scientist in the group, is the convener of the Machine Learning effort in the Analysis and Simulation working group.

Finally, Alberto Domínguez, a Ramón y Cajal fellow, is coordinating the activities of the AGN Science group of the Fermi-LAT collaboration.

Collaborations

The GAE collaborates with other Astroparticle Physics groups both nationally and internationally. As mentioned before, there is a long history of experience in extensive collaborations such as HEGRA, AUGER, MAGIC, and CTA.

Examples of such cooperation include, among others: the work in the Data Group in collaboration with the observatory of Paris, LAPP Annecy and MPKI Heidelberg, the development of a Trigger System for CTA Cameras along with CIEMAT, IFAE, and ICC-UB researchers, and the work in Machine Learning for CTA with Columbia University.