Introducing Matt Taylor

Matt Taylor is a Canadian postdoctoral researcher working as a Gemini Science Fellow at Gemini Observatory’s Northern Operations Center in Hilo, Hawaii. He completed his degree at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in July 2016, and has been working at Gemini since June 2017. His research revolves around using low-mass stellar systems like globular clusters, ultra-compact dwarfs, and dwarf galaxies to constrain the formation histories of their giant host galaxies in the nearby universe. His favourite colours are optical and near-infrared. He tweets @taylored4astro.

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Introducing Matt Russo

Matt Russo is an astrophysicist and musician who specializes in protoplanetary disks and astronomical data sonification. After completing degrees in Jazz guitar and astrophysics from the University of Toronto he became a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. Since May of 2017 he has been combining his two passions with SYSTEM Sounds, an outreach project which converts the rhythms and harmony of astronomy into music, sound, and animations. He is currently developing tactile-audio exhibits and planetarium shows to help make astronomy more accessible to the visually impaired. You can see and hear his space music at system-sounds.com and learn more about him at astromattrusso.com. He tweets @astromattrusso. Matt Russo is an astrophysicist and musician who specializes in protoplanetary disks and astronomical data sonification. After completing degrees in Jazz guitar and astrophysics from the University of Toronto he became a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. Since May of 2017 he has been combining his two passions with SYSTEM Sounds, an outreach project which converts the rhythms and harmony of astronomy into music, sound, and animations. He is currently developing tactile-audio exhibits and planetarium shows to help make astronomy more accessible to the visually impaired. You can see and hear his space music at system-sounds.com and learn more about him at astromattrusso.com. He tweets @astromattrusso.

Introducing Helen Maynard-Casely

Helen Maynard-Casely is a Planetary Scientist based at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) where she uses the neutrons and synchrotron x-rays to investigate the materials that make up our solar system. She has a PhD in high-pressure physics from the University of Edinburgh and has been lucky enough to have collected data in facilities all over the world, blowing up a few diamonds along the way. Currently she’s trying to characterise all the ‘minerals’ that would form on Europa and Titan. Always keen to tell anyone who’ll listen about planetary science, she tweets @Helen_E_MC.

Introducing Mario Jurić

Mario Jurić (@mjuric) is a professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington (@uwastronomy) & eScience Institute Fellow (at @uwescience). He’s interested in astronomical ‘Big Data’: developing and applying data science methods that let astrophysicists use large data sets to answer research questions. Two experiments he’s involved with are the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), and the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). Loves Python, prefers tabs, and thinks bash scripting is fun

Introducing Rachael Ainsworth

Rachael Ainsworth (@rachaelevelyn) is a Research Associate at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA) at the University of Manchester. Her expertise lies in the interpretation of radio emission from protostellar systems in nearby star forming regions, particularly at very long (metre) wavelengths. Her primary research interests include astrophysical jets/outflows, star formation and evolution. She works on the Horizon 2020 RadioNET “Radio Interferometry Next Generation Software” (RINGS) project to develop software for calibrating dispersive delay corrections in long baseline radio interferometry for long wavelength telescopes such as the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR).

She is Open Science Champion for the Interferometry Centre of Excellence at JBCA, where she promotes, advocates and organises events relating to open science in astronomy. She is also a Mozilla Open Leader running the open project Resources for Open Science in Astronomy (ROSA), which aims to compile and tailor open science best practices from around the web into a toolkit for astronomers to work openly from proposal to publication. This project seeks input from the entire astronomy community, so feel to bookmark https://github.com/rainsworth/ROSA and become a contributor to the project in the coming weeks.

Rachael also organises the Manchester chapter of XX+Data (@xxplusdatamcr) – a community for women who work with and love data. The goal of the community is to bring together women with diverse expertise and experience to support one another, share experiences and talk data.

Introducing Emily Sandford

Emily Sandford (@EmSandford) is a PhD student in the Cool Worlds lab at Columbia University. She uses planets to study stars, and she teaches computers how to recognize patterns in planetary transits. She has also worked on detecting dark matter using dissolving star clusters in the Milky Way. She writes for @Astrobites.

Introducing Benne Willem Holwerda

My name is Benne Willem Holwerda (@bennewillemholwerda). I have have started this year as an associate professor at the university of Louisville in Kentucky. My interests are dust in galaxies, galaxy evolution, our Milky Way in dwarf stars and the gas supply of galaxies over cosmic time.

Married, dad to ms C (7) and mr M (5).