Priv.-Doz. Dr. habil. Esra Bulbul

Assoc. Prof. Esra Bulbul serves as the lead scientist for cluster science and cosmology within the SRG/eROSITA collaboration. She holds a tenured W2 group leader position at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and an associate professor (Privatdozentin) in the Department of Physics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. 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 the CfA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She chairs the SRG/eROSITA consortium's clusters and cosmology team, as well as the Cosmology and Fundamental Physics Working Group for NewAthena (ESA's Space Telescope).

Dr. Bulbul's research interests focus 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 galaxy clusters 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 Prominent publications, including Nature, Scientific American, MIT News, Science, Phys.org, and Astronomy Magazine, among others. Dr. Bulbul's work on dark matter searches was selected as one of the top ten research highlights of the decade by the American Physical Society.

Dr. Bulbul is selected for the prestigious Henriette Herz Scouting Program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2026, and 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."

Publications:

Administrative Appointments:

• PI, ESO/4MOST Cluster Survey
• Chair, NewAthena Cosmology and Fundamental Physics Working Group
• Member, Science Advisory Board of the Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria
• Chair, eROSITA Clusters and Cosmology Group
• Member, eROSITA Consortium Board
• Co-chair, Athena Physics Beyond the Standard Model Topical Panel
• Co-chair, NASA Athena Science Study Team
• NASA Representative, Athena XIFU Science Advisory Team

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

• MPE News, Baryons at the Edge
• MPE News, Unveiling the 'Ghost' Baryonic Matter
• Astronomy Magazine, Scientists discovered the significant missing matter
  
• NASA News, X-ray Satellite XMM-Newton Sees Space Clover in a New Light
  
• Astronomy Magazine, Mysterious Cloverleaf ‘odd radio circle’ could be a merger of a dozen galaxies
  
• MPE News, Cosmic Dance of the "Space Clover"
• Science News, X-ray survey bolsters prevailing theory of universe’s expansion
• MPE News, eROSITA relaxes cosmological tension
• Nature News, This new map of the Universe suggests dark matter shaped the cosmos
• Quanta, Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predicts
• American Physical Society,  Top Ten Highlights of the Decade
• Scientific American, New X-Ray Map of Cosmic Megastructures Unravels Subatomic Mysteries
• BBC News, Galactic X-ray could Point to Dark matter Proof
• American Physical Society, Number #1 Research Highlight of the Year 2014
  
• ESA News, Puzzling X-rays point to dark matter
• Science News, X-rays From Other Galaxies Could Emanate From Particles of Dark Matter
• NASA News, Mysterious X-ray Signal Intrigues Astronomers
• New Scientist, Fresh hint of dark matter seen in neutrino search

Open Positions:

• Ph.D. position on cosmology and large scale structure with multi-wavelength surveys
• Postdoc Positions in Observational Cosmology, please contact Esra Bulbul at ebulbul@mpe.mpg.de for more information
  

Collaboration Memberships:

SRG/eROSITA, Euclid, Arcus, Athena, Hitomi X-ray Observatories, Rubin Observatory, SDSS-V, 4MOST Spectroscopic Telescope, South Pole Telescope, BabyIAXO

Teaching:

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Faculty of Physics, Physical Processes and Application in Space (2026)

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

Current Group Members:

Dr. Emmanuel Artis, postdoc (2022 - present)

Ziyu Ding, Ph.D. Student, CSC Fellow (2025 - present)

Luca Fiorino, Ph.D. Student (2025 - present)

Dr. Matthias Kluge, postdoc (2022- present)

Dr. Nicola Malavasi,  Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (2023-present)

Egehan Ozturk, Master student (2025 - present) 

Dr. Xiaoyuan Zhang, postdoc (2022 - present)

Silas Zelmer, Ph.D. Student (2023 - present)

Alumni:

Guillermo Ayllon, Undergraduate student (2020)

Emre Bahar, Ph.D. student (2020-2024) 

Fabian Balzer, Ph.D. Student (2022 - 2025)

Nicolas Baron Perez, Master student (2021 - 2022) 

Dr. Christian Garrel, postdoc (2022-2024)

Filippo Guastella, Master student (2024-2025) 

Justo Gonzales, master student (2021 - 2022) 

Dr. Vittorio Ghirardini, postdoc (2019-2024) 

Dr. Ang Liu, postdoc, (2020-2025) 

Sergei Makarov, Master student (2021 - 2022)

usuf Ozsoy, Master's student (2020 - 2021)

Jan Strunk, Master student (2024-2025) 

Giacomo Tonelli, Master student (2024-2025)