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  • 2022: International award for TITANS researcher Stefano Bovino

    The German Astronomical Society (AG) has awarded Dr. Stefano Bovino, from The Nucleus Millenium TITANS, and Dr. Tommaso Grassi, from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, with the Astrophysical Software Award for the development of the astrochemistry package KROME.

    KROME is an open-source code that was developed to include chemistry and thermal processes in numerical hydrodynamical simulations to properly describe the thermal evolution of gas. It is a key tool to study, among the others, star-forming regions, galaxy evolution, black hole formation, complex chemical pathways, as well as to compare simulations with observational data of atomic or molecular lines. KROME can model any chemical network for which the reaction rates are known and includes modules to incorporate dust physics. The development of KROME has expanded the possibilities for modelling thermochemistry in astrophysical simulations and has contributed to significant advances in astrophysical knowledge and to the education of students and postdocs in astrochemistry.

    Dr. Bovino says “with KROME we run dynamic simulations to understand the physics of different regions of space. Normally, what one wants to do is include the thermodynamics part, to know how both the gas temperature and the chemistry of the interstellar medium are regulated and evolved, so we can compare the theoretical results with the observations”.

    Since 2011 there has been five KROME schools and more than 200 participants from all over the world.

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