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4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope

Congratulations to Dr Lara Cullinane!

by Lisa Kelsey on 2025-12-16

Dr Lara Cullinane
Dr Lara Cullinane (Credit: AIP/Spikermann)

We are delighted to share the exciting news that Dr Lara Cullinane has been awarded a prestigious Leibniz Junior Research Group based at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP).

Her project, titled “Chronicling the Clouds: Chemodynamics of the Most Massive Dwarf Galaxies”, will use 4MOST to explore how these dwarf galaxies formed, evolved, and interacted over billions of years.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are key laboratories for understanding galaxy evolution, mass assembly, and the long-term consequences of gravitational interactions. Despite their proximity, many aspects of their past remain unclear.

By harnessing high-quality spectroscopic data from 4MOST, Dr Cullinane’s team will reconstruct the chemical enrichment, star-formation history, and dynamical evolution of these galaxies with unprecedented detail.

We extend our warmest congratulations to Dr Lara Cullinane on this outstanding achievement and look forward to the exciting discoveries her group will make with 4MOST!

You can read the original AIP press release here:
https://www.aip.de/en/news/research-group-magellanic-clouds/

The Large Magellanic Cloud
LMC credit: ESO/VMC Survey.
The Small Magellanic Cloud
SMC credit: ESO/VISTA VMC.
The 4MOST survey will obtain spectra for millions of stars across both the Large Magellanic Cloud (left) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (right).