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In recent years, shell model studies have significantly contributed in improving the nuclear input, required in simulations of the dynamics of astrophysical objects and their associated nucleosynthesis. This review highlights a few examples such as electron capture rates and neutrino-nucleus cross sections, important for the evolution and nucleosynthesis of supernovae. For simulations of rapid neutron-capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis, shell model studies have contributed to an improved understanding of half lives of neutron-rich nuclei with magic neutron numbers and of the nuclear level densities and γ-strength functions that are both relevant for neutron capture rates.

This paper is an extended and updated version of the contribution to the 11th International Spring Seminar on Nuclear Physics: Shell Model and Nuclear Structure—Achievements of the Past Two Decades, Ischia, Italy, 12–16 May 2014.