Irina Zhuravleva

Irina Zhuravleva is a Russian astrophysicist, currently a Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor at the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. She works mainly in the field of high energy X-ray astrophysics, with very significant contributions in the topic of turbulent heating in clusters of galaxies. She is active in the fields of the physics of galaxy clusters, groups, and most massive galaxies. She is involved in the development of several future X-ray observatories, such as XRISM, Lynx and Athena. She received several prizes and accolades for her studies, including the Otto Hahn Medal prize of the Max Planck Society in 2013.
Education and career path
Irina Zhuravleva received her master of science from the Saint-Petersburg State University (Russia) in 2008, before moving to the Ludwig-Maximilian University and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (Germany) for her Ph.D., which she obtained in 2011. After that, she was a postdoctoral associate at Stanford University before becoming an assistant professor of Astronomy at the University of Chicago.
Scientific contributions
Irina Zhuravleva contributed significantly to understanding the physics of clusters of galaxies and, in particular, how the intra-cluster medium (ICM) is able to reach temperatures high enough (10 to 100 million degrees Kelvin) to emit hard X-ray photons. In particular, combining new theoretical models and observations from X-ray telescopes, she suggested that turbulent heating can play a significant role in keeping the gas in the ICM sufficiently hot.
X-ray telescopes
Professor Zhuravleva is also actively involved in the planning and development of several future X-ray observatories, which will take the place of the current Chandra and XMM-Newton observatories in the next decades. In particular, she is involved in the development of the X-ray telescope Athena

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu