Introducing Emma Alexander

Emma Alexander (@Emma_Alexander) is a radio astronomer studying the magnetic fields of radio galaxies. She is currently doing her PhD at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (University of Manchester, UK), working on POSSUM, the POlarisation Sky Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism. POSSUM is of the projects currently being undertaken with ASKAP, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope, and covers a wide range of polarisation and magnetism science. Emma focuses on well-resolved radio galaxies and the magnetic fields of their lobes, which are radio-bright structures extending from the central Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN).

Emma also has a background in amateur astronomy, but doesn’t get the chance to get out of the city as often as she’d like to observe. She is also active in scientific outreach – both in person and through media – including appearances on national radio and working on the Jodcast (@Jodcast), an astronomy podcast run by Jodrell Bank astronomers. Outside of astronomy, she enjoys playing netball, cooking & baking vegan foods, and looking after her pets: two guinea pigs and a cat.

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Introducing Kovi Rose

Kovi Rose is a final year physics undergraduate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a research assistant, in the Racah Institute of Physics, on an observational astrophysics team that uses radio telescopes to study core-collapse supernovae. In order to create a more extensive catalogue of supernovae and other bright radio sources, the team monitors the discoveries and classifications of low redshift astronomical transients, conducting follow-up observations and analyses of the radio emissions coming from these stellar objects.

Having noticed the increasing trend of anti-intellectualism and science denial, Kovi developed a passion for science communication and outreach. After the creation of @funfactscience, a Facebook/Twitter/Instagram science communication platform, Kovi has worked with an international team science communicators and educators on a number outreach campaigns; centered around topics like women in STEM and astronomy.

Outside of his online efforts, Kovi works for the Ramon Foundation in a project-based learning program which culminates in the launch of an experiment to the International Space Station. In his remaining free time Kovi volunteers with the HORIZON space educators community as well as SpaceIL, the privately funded Israeli nonprofit set to land a spacecraft on the Moon in February 2019.

Introducing Josephine Peters

Josephine Peters (@josieapeters) is a PhD student at the University of Oxford. She researches galaxy evolution with data from radio interferometers; the Very Large Array (VLA) and the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR). She takes samples of hundreds of galaxies and looks at how their luminosity changes over the history of the Universe. Before her PhD, Josie did an MSc at the University of Manchester and a BSc in Maths at King’s College London. It was outreach in the form of a photography exhibition that inspired Josie to go into astronomy.

To share her love of astronomy (and hopefully inspire others as she was inspired), Josie presents videos on astronomy news, explains topics such as spacetime and quasars, and interviews other astronomers.

When other aspects of science grab her curiosity, Josie co-presents a new podcast called A Piece of String (@StringPodcast), that brings together comedians and scientific minds to answer the biggest of all questions, ever.

Beyond science, Josie spends her time drawing silly comics (@artartyeahart), performing improvised comedy with The Oxford Imps and singing loudly.

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 Benne Holwerda

Benne Holwerda is a postdoc at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands working with Rychard Bouwens. He will be starting as an associate professor at the University of Louisville on January 1, 2017. Leiden Observatory has a rich hiistory in astronomy and today is a vibrant research facility in extra-galactic astronomy, astrochemistry and instrumentation.

Benne Holwerda works on galaxies, and their gas, dust and stars, in galaxies both near and far. He studies dust in galaxies using accidental overlapping (occulting) galaxies and gas using the MeerKAT Radio Telescope, under construction in South Africa (to be completed mid-2017). He works on the most distant galaxies with Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. He has worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute, the University of Cape Town, and the European Space Telescope.

You can find Benne  most other weeks at @BenneHolwerda

Introducing Nicole Gugliucci

Astronomer, writer, educator, skeptic, maker-of-tiny-comets, and all around geek Dr. Nicole Gugliucci has made it her mission to study and share the Universe. Known as the “NoisyAstronomer,” she earned a doctorate studying radio astronomy in 2012 from the University of Virginia and working with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Having started with millimeter-wavelength radio astronomy in college, she worked her way down the spectrum to the 2-meter wavelength work of PAPER, an array in South Africa to search for the hydrogen in the early Universe. She now leads the informal education efforts and participates in educational research with the citizen science project CosmoQuest. She travels to conventions around the country sharing citizen science with whomever will listen. She tweets as @NoisyAstronomer, a pun on radio astronomy and her birthplace of New York City.