Overview
The complex interplay between the interstellar medium (ISM) and
the stars that it gives birth to is central to studies of galaxy
evolution. The properties of the ISM, and especially its capacity
to cool, determine when and where star formation occurs. Those
properties are well-known in the Milky Way but not in external
galaxies where the physical scales studied and the environment
such as metallicity, star-formation activity, AGN activity can
differ widely.
The goal of this project is to characterize the properties of
the star-forming ISM, its physical conditions and structure,
in nearby spiral and dwarf galaxies.
Only recently has the extragalactic community dedicated effort
to obtain very rich archives of the ISM tracers (dust, CO and
now [CII]) from both space and ground based observatories.
To interpret the data in a selfconsistent way, I exploit the
spectral and spatial information of state-of-the-art observations,
in particular from the Herschel, Spitzer, SOFIA, IRAM, and ALMA
observatories, and build multiphase radiative transfer models.
One of the main objectives is to better understand the physics
and origin of the emission of [CII] in galaxies, as it is becoming
a workhorse diagnostic in galaxies of the distant universe.
![](images/dwarfs.png)