Sylvia Ploeckinger

Astrophysicist (senior postdoctoral fellow) at the University of Vienna (Austria)

A Little About Me

I am a scientist working on expanding our understanding of the Universe we live in. The methods I am using reach from calculations involving mostly pen and (lots of) paper to developing complex large-scale cosmological simulations that run on thousands of processors for months within an international collaboration of scientists.

I received my PhD from the Department of Astrophysics in Vienna, Austria and I have since been a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands as well as at the Institute for Computational Cosmology in Durham (UK). Between September 2019 to August 2022 I was working at the Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics in Leiden funded by a personal grant from NWO.

Since September 2022 I am back at the Department of Astrophysics in Vienna, Austria, funded by a Marie-Jahoda stipend (09/22 - 12/22) and an Elise-Richter fellowship (01/23-mid 27).

News

The Special Research Area DUNE (Dark UNiverse Explorations)

December 2025

We have received the wonderful news that our application for a Special Research Area (Spezialforschungsbereich, SFB) has been successful and will be fully funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) with around 4 million Euros! The DUNE team currently consists of Tim Schrabback (coordinator), Sebastian Grandis, Laila Linke, Francine Marleau (all University of Innsbruck), Oliver Hahn and Sylvia Ploeckinger from the University of Vienna and Jorryt Matthee from the Institute for Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). We will be extending the team soon!

Contact me

Department of Astrophysics
Türkenschanzstrasse 17
1180 Vienna
Austria

sylvia.ploeckinger@univie.ac.at