Francesco Shankar

Professor Francesco Shankar holds the Chair of Astrophysics at the University of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy, serving as CHEP professional development lead. He leads the H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Bid4BEST network (13 PhD students/20 partners) studying supermassive black holes in cosmological contexts. His research focuses on galaxy evolution, AGN demographics, and cosmological simulations (e.g., Euclid mission contributions).

Education: PhD from SISSA, postdocs at Ohio State University, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (Alexander von Humboldt Fellow), and Observatoire de Paris (Marie Curie Fellow).

Teaching: Module leader for Cosmology (VLE Award winner 2019/2022), previously taught Galaxies and Astrophysics courses. Supervised students now in academia/industry roles (e.g., Ayima, Qinetiq).

Awards: Top 1.5% across 7M scientists (Ioannidis 2019), Pietro Tacchini Prize, Leverhulme Fellowship, multiple EU/UK fellowships. Advisory roles: Polish, Swiss NSF, Chilean CONICYT, Italian MIUR science boards. Editor for Universe journal.

Projects: ASTERA immersive 3D cosmological visualizer, DECODE semi-empirical galaxy formation model, blood pressure optimization strategies (medical science collaboration).