Luis Henry Quiroga-Nuñez defended his thesis in style

© photo credit to Andres Perez

He came to Dwingeloo from Colombia for the first time in 2012 as a JIVE summer student and on March 12 2020, Luis Henry Quiroga-Nuñez successfully defended his PhD thesis in Leiden. The title of the thesis was “Stellar Radio Beacons for Galactic Astrometry”. Under this title featured contributions to both the BeSSeL and BAaDE projects, as well as a chapter on radio flare stars. For all subjects, Luis pioneered combining the radio results with Gaia astrometry. In fact, his work stands out because he used many different techniques and data from many different wavelength regimes and different telescopes. All with a clear link to VLBI astrometry.

The ceremony became somewhat special with early Corona measures taking effect and two committee members joining by video. The committee examined the thesis and took note of the compelling answers by the candidate. Then our Luis received the doctorate. In the ‘laudatio’ the breadth of the thesis was praised, which is also a credit to the many collaborators working on these projects, from JIVE, ASTRON, Leiden and indeed around the world. It was also noted that, besides his doctorate, Luis had achieved some exceptional goals in exceptional circumstances during his time in the Netherlands; with his family now being Dutch, he started a prestiguous Jansky fellowship in New Mexico.

After a few elbow shakes and a somewhat socially-distanced party, Luis and family made it back to Albuquerque just before travel came to a halt.