The Master Theses reported below were written by MASS Students and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master degree as part of a multiple degree awarded in the framework of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master in Astrophysics and Space Science – MASS, jointly delivered by a Consortium of four Universities: Tor Vergata University of Rome, University of Belgrade, University of Bremen, and Université Cote d’Azur, regulated by the MASS Consortium Agreement and co-funded by the EU under the call ERASMUS-EDU-2021-PEX-EMJM-MOB. Thesis authors are listed in alphabetical order by surname.
MASS Edition 1
- Ifeoma Mavis Akpuogwu – “Pulsar timing around a supermassive black hole: Analytical calculations of propagation delay in Schwarzschild space-time“
- Aurellio Deandra – “Close supermassive binary black holes and expected broad line shapes in active galaxies“
- Josiah O. Faniyi – “Data reduction and modelling of dust emissions in three nearby Active Galactic Nuclei“
- Sreeparna Ganguly – “Investigating thePhysical Properties of the Powerful Accretion Disk Wind in the Active Galaxy IRAS 13224-3809 with XMM-Newton“
- Nicolas G. Guerra Varas – “From SEDs to Light-Curves: A Multimodal Approach to Broad Absorption Line Quasar Characterization and Identification“
- Gauri Shankar Hari – “Cosmic Filament Reconstruction: Insights from Cosmological Simulations“
- Ridha F. Mohideen Malik – “Fermi Gamma-Ray Bursts: Precursors and Spectral lag“
- Aliza Mustafa – “Detecting Promordial B-modes in the Cosmic Microwave Background: Tackling Component Separation Challenges“
- Sagarika Paul – “Shedding light on Active Galactic Nuclei in the Early Universe: Investigating the Average X-ray Spectrum of Quasars at the Epoch of Reionization“
- Brandon Rajkumar – “The Sun as a star: Investigating the Influence of Solar Activity Features on Radial Velocity Signals“
- Aman Nadimpalli Raju – “Application of attentive and latent neural processes to quasar light curves in the context of the LSST“
- Marco I. B. Rivera – “Search for gravitational waves associated with the Vela pulsar glitch of 2024 April 29 – Development of a burst gravitational-wave Bayesian inference pipeline“
- Macarena C. Vega Pallauta – “High-Contrast Imaging of Exoplanetary Systems with Very Large Telescopes“
MASS Edition 2
- Natalia Alvarez Baena – “Beyond the iron peak: Galactic evolution of Molybdenum through Open Clusters“
- Manidipa Banerjee – “Characterizing the large-scale recovery capabilities of Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST)“
- Daisy Bergin – “Investigating Machine Learning Techniques for Estimating Line-of-Sight Gravity Differences from GRACE-FO Intersatellite Ranging Data“
- Francesca Borg – “Characterisation of the Sagittarius stellar stream using RR Lyrae variables as stellar tracers“
- Thara Rubi Caba Pineda – “Constraining the High-energy Emission of NGC 1068“
- Jeronimo Calderon Gomez – “Spectrointerferometry from the approach of bulk optics and photonics“
- Iuliu Daniel Cuceu – “Bayesian model classification for burst gravitational-wave signals Basilic: rapid, reproducible burst science“
- Nandita Das – “Comparison of the spectral properties of a sample of near-by type 1 AGNs measured from Gaia XP and SDSS spectra“
- Pablo Drake Hernandez – “How Optical Absorbers Shape the Circulation and Spectra of Hot Jupiters: Application to the JWST Spectra of WASP-121 b“
- Daniella Glezina – “Tracing Asymmetries in the 67P’s Dust Coma Brightness Distribution Using Rosetta’s OSIRIS Observations“
- Zubaida Karim Juthy – “Generalized Geodesic Equations From Planck Scale Deformed Dispersion Relations“
- Kamakshi Kaushik – “Age Determination of Solar like Stars in Preparation for the PLATO Mission“
- Muhammad Haider Khan – “Lensing and Photon Rings in a Magnetized Black Hole Spacetime.“
- Chiara Marcq – “Development of Reproducible Organic Electrochemical Transistor (OECT)-Based Phosphate Sensors for Resource-Limited Space Environments“
- Mariami Mtchedlidze – “Shadow of an Accelerated Black Hole in an Expanding Universe“
- Maghana Pannikkote – “Exploring the late-time X-ray emission in tidal disruption events with Einstein Probe“
- Jonna Catarina Schickhoff – “Space plasmas: solar wind turbulence and comets“
- Yan Seyffert – “Relativistic Time Modeling for Lunar Positioning Navigation and Timing“
- Shoaib Jamal Shamsi – “Characterising Active Galactic Nuclei Time-Domain Variability with Multiwavelength Time Descriptors“
- Urwa Shoaib – “Component Separation Methods for Neutral Hydrogen Intensity Mapping”
- Bozhidara Nikolova Stoyanova – “The evolution of the Main Sequence of star-forming galaxies from JWST deep fields“
Researchers Night 2025
This year as well, MASS was present at the event organized in the framework of the European Researchers Night in Rome, 26th-27th November 2025. Edition 2 students participated in the preparation with short summaries of their Master theses, which were translated to Italian and combined into a new dedicated foldable brochure that was distributed to the public.
Researchers Night 2024
The Tor Vergata University of Rome organized an event in the framework of the European Researchers Night 2024. MASS Edition-1 students participated in the event by preparing short summaries of their Master theses, which were translated to Italian and assembled into a dedicated brochure that was distributed to the public on 28/09/2024.
The maps in these videos represent the diffusion of the awareness about the MASS program based on the country of origin of registered users on the MASS application platform, following each call for applications:
- Number of new registered users per country of origin between the first and second MASS call for applications
Author: Adalia Caroli – MASS Project Office
- Number of new registered users per country of origin between the second and the third call for applications
Author: Adalia Caroli – MASS Project Office
- Number of new registered users per country of origin after the third call for applications, until 15/02/2024.
Author: Adalia Caroli – MASS Project Office
- Number of new registered users per country of origin between the third and the fourth call for applications
Author: Adalia Caroli – MASS Project Office
- Number of new registered users per country (808 in total) between the end of the third and the end of the fourth call for applications, from 01/03/2024 to 14/02/2025. After this date the access to the application platform was closed, being the fourth edition the last one under the current EMJM program.
Author: Adalia Caroli – MASS Project Office
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or granting authority European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.