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Dr. Esra Bulbul

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Principle Invetigator

W2 Group Leader

Email:

ebulbul@mpe.mpg.de

Phone:

+49 89 30000-3502

Address:

Gießenbachstraße 1,

85748 Garching bei München

Brief Bio:

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Dr. Esra Bulbul serves as the lead scientist for cluster science and cosmology scientist within the SRG/eROSITA collaboration. She holds a tenured group leader (W2 professor) position at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and is a university lecturer in the Department of Physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, currently pursuing habilitation. Dr. Bulbul earned her Ph.D. in physics from the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Prior to joining MPE, she held a staff scientist position at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and completed postdoctoral fellowships at CfA, Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT), and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She chairs the SRG/eROSITA consortium's clusters and cosmology team and co-chairs the Physics Beyond Standard Model Topical Panel for Athena (ESA's Space Telescope).

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Dr. Bulbul's research interests are focused on understanding the growth of structure and the fundamental physics of the universe, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy, by utilizing observations of clusters of galaxies detected in large area multi-wavelength surveys. Dr. Bulbul has authored more than 130 peer-reviewed publications, with her being the first or second author on 32 of them. She has given more than 60 invited talks at international meetings and colloquia in the leading universities and institutes, as well as public outreach talks. Her work received comprehensive media coverage from Nature publications, Scientific American, MIT News, Science, Phys.org, Astronomy Magazine, and other media sources. Dr. Bulbul's work on dark matter searches was selected among the top ten research highlights of the decade by the American Physical Society.

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Dr. Bulbul was awarded the €2M European Research Council's Consolidator Grant in 2020 for "DarkQuest: Shedding Light on the Nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy with Multi-wavelength All-Sky Surveys." The ERC Consolidator Grants recognize exceptional researchers with a strong scientific track record and great potential based in EU Member States or associated countries. In 2025, Dr. Bulbul was awarded the prestigious Mid-Career Award by the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society for her "singular role in the success of the eROSITA Cluster and Cosmology Team results, developing the largest galaxy cluster catalog to date, and obtaining the most precise constraints on the matter distribution in our universe via the cluster mass function."

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Research Interests:

  • Cosmology

  • Dark Matter Searches

  • Large Scale Structure

  • Physics of Galaxy Groups and Clusters

  • Large Area Multi-wavelength Surveys

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Administrative Appointments:

  • Chair, eROSITA Clusters and Cosmology Group, 2019 - Present

  • Co-chair, Athena Physics Beyond the Standard Model Topical Panel, 2020 - Present

  • Co-chair, NASA Athena Science Study Team, 2019

  • NASA Representative, Athena XIFU Science Advisory Team, 2016 - 2019

 

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Collaboration Memberships:

eROSITA, BabyIAXO, Arcus X-ray Mission, Athena X-ray Observatory, AXIS X-ray Satellite, Hitomi X-ray Observatory, Rubin Observatory, SDSS-V, 4MOST Spectroscopic Telescope, South Pole Telescope, Euclid Consortium

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Publications:

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/public-libraries/SyZPvexPSE2oOhxYds1TsA

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Awards and Grants:

 

 

Teaching:

 

 Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Faculty of Physics, Physics of Cosmic Plasmas (2024)

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Press:

Dr. Bulbul's research has been covered in major media outlets;

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