Funes, born January 31, 1963, in Cordoba, Argentina, completed his masters' degree in astronomy (licenciado en astronomia) at the National University of Cordoba, in 1985. The theme of his master thesis was the computational analysis of the photoelectric photometry of eclipsing binary stars. In 2000 he obtained his doctorate in astronomy at the University of Padua with the study of the kinematics of the ionized gas in the inner regions of 25 disk galaxies.

Funes entered the Society of Jesus in 1985, obtaining a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1990 at the Universidad del Salvador in San Miguel, Argentina. In the same university he attained the master in philosphy (licenciado en filosofia) in 1996. In the master thesis he discussed cosmology as a science from the point of view of scientific realism. In 1995 after completing the bachelor's degree in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, he was ordained to the priesthood.

He joined the Vatican Observatory Research Group as staff astronomer in March 2000, and he was appointed Director of the Vatican Observatory in August 2006.

Research Interests: Funes specializes in extragalactic astronomy. His field of research includes the kinematics and dynamics of disk galaxies, the star formation in the local universe. the relationship between gravitational interaction and galalctic activity.

He studies the kinematics of stars and gas in the inner regions of disk galaxies. By studying the bi-dimensional shape of the emission lines obtained from high spatial resolution, long-slit spectra along the major axes of disk galaxies, it is possible to put constraints on the mass of central supermassive black holes, which in the standard paradigm are believed to be nearly ubiquitous in galaxy centers and the engine of the phenomena related to the Active Galactic Nuclei. The goal is to extend demographics studies about super massive black holes in galaxies, in order to better define the relation between their mass and those of the spheroidal components of the hosting galaxies. This relation offers strong clues to galaxy formation and evolution. Moreover, a detailed study of the stellar and gaseous kinematics of Sa galaxies has shown an interesting phenomenon of bulge-disk orthogonal geometric and kinematical decoupling. This peculiarity suggests that the disk could be formed by accretion of material around the spheroidal component that we observe today.

VATT science: One of the major problems in Astrophysics is the understanding of the galaxy formation process. In this process, the history of the star formation rate in the universe plays a very important role. For a better comprehension of the star formation in the local universe (galaxies within 11 Mpc), Funes is conducting a deep H-alpha imaging survey using VATT. These data will provide in-depth information on the distributions of local star formation in terms of galaxy types, luminosities, and interstellar environments, and provide critical tests of the methodology used in constructing the history of the star formation rate in the universe.

In addition to this project Funes is investigating the relationship between gravitational interaction and galactic activity. To demonstrate that most Seyfert galaxies (a class of Active Galactic Nuclei) have undergone interactions, he has started a program aimed at taking deep images through the B, R, and H-alpha filters of a spectroscopically selected sample of Seyfert galaxies. The images obtained with VATT were analyzed using an adaptive filtering technique designed to emphasize faint structures and knots and to reveal disturbed morphologies (distortions in the circumnuclear regions and small bars, double nuclei, faint companions, faint tidal tails) that can be interpreted as the effect of gravitational interaction.