About DARK

Established by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF), the Dark Cosmology Centre opened September 1st, 2005 in the Rockefeller building, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, which was initially funded by the DNRF for a duration of ten years (2005-2015).

Today DARK continues to receive funding from a variety of sources, including the Villum Foundation, the European Union/European Commission, Nordforsk, the Carlsberg Foundation, and the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation.

In February 2017, DARK obtained a Niels Bohr Professorship from the DNRF, a grant won by theoretical astrophysicist Prof. Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz. The 10-year long collaboration with prof. Ramirez was thus formalized and enhanced to a formidable level of science in the field of high energy astrophysics.

DARK constitutes the cosmology research group at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) , which means that several of its staff are permanent faculty members at the NBI, cooperating on the delivery of the astrosphysics curriculum at the bachelor's and master's level, and contributing to the overall teaching and research aims of the NBI. 

The DARK team

Currently consists of 30 research staff, science support, 9 PhD students, and a number of MSc students. The team members bring in key expertise and interact closely on a daily basis. In addition, DARK receives around 50 visits per year from international collaborators. 

Activities

At DARK we focus on research, but other activities are also important: research training, teaching, and conveying the results and methods of studying the dark Universe to the public. Increasing the number of women in science, and in particular astronomy, continues to be a high priority.

Affiliations

Observing facilities and instruments


Computing

  • Local DARK cluster: ~2000 cores, 1 Pb storage
  • Access to national and international computing resources and storage
  • Apple laptops

Large collaborations