Marie Martig

Dr. Marie Martig is a Reader in Astrophysics at the Astrophysics Research Institute (ARI) of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), a position she has held since September 2022. Previously, she served as Senior Lecturer at ARI/LJMU from May 2017 to September 2022. Her academic trajectory includes a Humboldt Fellowship and postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg (2013-2017), and a postdoctoral position at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia (2010-2013).

She earned her PhD in Astrophysics from CEA Saclay, France (2007-2010). Her educational background reflects strong foundations in theoretical and computational astrophysics.

Dr. Martig's research centers on galaxy formation and evolution, integrating numerical simulations with observational data from the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. She investigates how small-scale physics—gas dynamics, star formation, and feedback—interacts with large-scale processes like mergers and gas accretion to shape galaxy populations. Key questions address galactic disk formation mechanisms, stellar radial migration drivers, and how star formation dependencies evolve across cosmic time. Her work emphasizes chemodynamical modeling to connect present-day galaxy properties with their evolutionary histories.

Recent publications reveal a concentrated focus on edge-on disk galaxies through the GECKOS survey, demonstrating methodological innovation in spatially resolved stellar and gas kinematics. This work has established critical links between disk structure, chemical evolution, and merger histories, with particular advances in understanding thick disk formation and bar-spiral interactions.

• Humboldt Fellowship

As science coordinator of the GECKOS survey—a VLT/MUSE Large Programme—Dr. Martig leads an international collaboration conducting deep observations of 35 nearby edge-on disk galaxies. This flagship project generates spatially resolved measurements of stellar abundances, ages, kinematics, and gas properties to build comprehensive chemodynamical models of disk evolution. Her research group actively develops simulation-observation comparison frameworks.

The GECKOS collaboration represents her primary research infrastructure, combining observational campaigns with hydrodynamical simulations from projects like AURIGA to investigate disk galaxy assembly across cosmic time.