As part of the NewFunFiCO network, from 15 to 17 June 2026 Frankfurt am Main will host a workshop on the title “The Extreme Gravity of Astrophysical Compact Objects ”. Dr. Claudio Meringolo, Dr. Filippo Camilloni, postdoc members of the JETSET team, are part of the Local Organising and Scientific Committee. The workshop chairpersons are Dr. Filippo Camilloni and JETSET P.I. Prof. Luciano Rezzolla. The artworks for the dedicated Conference Webpage were also realised by JETSET Ph.D member Marie Cassing.
The workshop will bring together experts on various research aspects involving the astrophysics of Compact Objects, from black holes and neutron stars to exotic configurations like gravastars and boson stars, and adopting different approaches from fundamentally theoretical, to phenomenological and numerical simulations.
In June, many of the members of the NewFunFiCO network will converge in Frankfurt and have the opportunity to present their research and establish new collaborations.
The workshop is particularly useful for Master and PhD researchers, with lectures and talks that will provide state of the art knowledge on Relativistic Astrophysics, Strong Gravity, Numerical Relativity, Gravitational Wave Astronomy, and Numerical methods.
The workshop will take place at the Physikalischer Verein, an historical place for physics. This is indeed the place where in 1922 Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach realised the important Stern-Gerlach experiment, proving the quantization of the intrinsic angular momentum as predicted by the then-newborn quantum mechanics.
NewFunFiCO is an international network funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2021 research and innovation programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant No 101086251). Over its four years of activity, the network has successfully established a global collaboration with complementary expertise. This was achieved by supporting the exchange of researchers among the various nodes around the globe: Aveiro University (Portugal, coordinator), University of Valencia (Spain), Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Am Main (Germany), Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (Mexico), Universidade Federal do Pará (Brazil) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (China).
Research within NewFunFiCO spans from the theoretical foundations and phenomenology of compact objects such as black holes, neutron stars, and other exotic compact objects (Gravastars, Boson stars and Proca stars), to the comparison with gravitational-waves and astrophysical observations and the interaction of compact objects with environment, using numerical simulations, building GW libraries as well as data/Bayesian analysis and parameter estimation.