| Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Sebastian Perez

Music Composition
Santiago, Region Metropolitana,
Chile

Sebastián Pérez, Santiago, Chile. Astrophysicist. Pérez is an astrophysicist who has worked on a range of topics from black hole physics to planet formation. He serves as a bridge between theoretical work and observations, contributing to a better understanding of the planet formation processes by using both, state-of-the-art optical telescopes and radio interferometers, as well as high performance computing clusters. His recent papers present astrophysical predictions for detecting on-going planet formation. Committed to science education, he wrote an engaging children's novel about astronomy aimed at motivating girls to pursue scientific careers. The novel was published in 2015 and all 4000 copies have been sold out, read across Chile's public schools. During 2017, he has lead an embodied learning research initiative which aims at providing experiences where students can acquire an intuition about physics and astronomy using movement of their bodies alone. He is interested on a broad spectrum of astrophysical phenomena. He works closely with Anna Yermakova on art+science creative initiatives and will be collaborating with her while in residence at Djerassi. In 2017, they worked on a charango concerto together, which is based on the fundamental laws of nature. Sebastián served both as physicist and charango soloist for this piece. He is the director of the Chilean Skies Concert project (Concierto Cielos), which combines music and astronomy. His adventures in the art+science world started in 2013/2014 as director of the Art, Astronomy, Technology and Society group at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Chile. He did his PhD at Oxford University, UK. Now, he works as a researcher at Universidad de Chile.