About me

I am a Global Talent Junior Fellow at the Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías (IGFAE) at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.
Contact: marta.reina@usc.es
     IGFAE, Rúa de Xoaquín Díaz de Rábago, 15705 Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña (Spain)
Further information at IGFAE

Research interests

I am interested on the co-formation and evolution of star clusters and their host galaxies in a hierarchical galaxy assembly context, with my ultimate goal being to be able to use old, massive stellar cluster populations as near-field cosmological tracers. In particular, I’m interested in:

• The formation of clustered stellar systems over cosmic time, and their interplay with galaxy formation.
• Constraining the physics involved in massive cluster formation, regardless of the cosmic epoch.
• Development of sub-grid models of star formation and feedback in numerical simulations of galaxy formation.
• Expanding our observational knowledge of star cluster populations in galaxy clusters back in time using imaging from the James Webb Space Telescope.
• Mapping the distribution of mass in galaxy clusters using bright star clusters, and exploring constraints for dark matter models.

Here is a recent invited talk I gave at the Fields Institute (Toronto, Canada) as part of the “Defining New Simulation Frontiers for Dark Matter Discovery” workshop, which I co-organised.

Publications

For an updated list of my publications, please check my ADS link or my orcid number.

Outreach

I am a firm advocate that academia, and the STEM fields, benefit immensely when incorporating a plurality of voices and lifestyles. Over the past years I have participated in a variety of outreach activities. The Spanish Astronomical Society organises a “Chat with a Female Astronomer” program, in which the general public has access to online chats with individual female astronomers from Spain. Thanks to this program, I have engaged with more than a hundred participants since its first annual event in 2019. Back in 2017, I gave a TEDxUniHeidelberg talk on the multi-scale complexity of astrophysical phenomena.

Curriculum vitae

Find a one-page summary of my CV here (updated Feb 2026)