Carole Mundell | |
---|---|
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | University of Glasgow |
Known for | Gamma Ray Bursts, Extragalactic Astronomy |
Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Institutions | |
Thesis | Distribution and Kinematics of Neutral and Ionised Gas in Seyfert Galaxies (1995) |
Website | Research Profile |
Carole Mundell is an observational astrophysicist who researches cosmic black holes and gamma ray bursts. Since 2023 she has been the Director of Science at the European Space Agency. [1]
Mundell graduated from the University of Glasgow with a BSc in Physics and Astronomy in 1992. [2] She moved to Manchester to complete a PhD in Astrophysics, working at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, where she held a PPARC Research Fellowship until 1997. [2]
Mundell joined the University of Maryland in 1997. [2] [3] She moved to Liverpool John Moores University in 1999 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow focussing on the dynamics of active galaxies. [4] [5] In 2005 she was awarded a prestigious RCUK Academic Fellowship to build and lead new Gamma Ray Burst team at LJMU, and was appointed Professor in 2007. [6] [7] In 2007 her team won the Times Higher Education Research Project of the Year Award for 'Measuring Gamma Ray Bursts'. [8]
Mundell has played a leading role in the understand Gamma Ray Bursts, developing robotic telescopes that can capture the extremely fast jets. [9] In 2011 she won a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award for her research on "Black Hole-Driven Explosions and the Dynamic Universe". [4] In 2012 whilst at Liverpool, Mundell co-designed and built RINGO2, a telescope to measure the polarisation of optical light produced after a gamma ray burst. [10] The telescope was designed to react quickly to notifications from NASA's Swift Satellite. [11] She has described the gamma-ray bursts as "the most extreme particle accelerators in the universe", which offer opportunities for testing "laws of physics". [12] In 2014, her team won a Vice Chancellor's medal for Research Scholarship. [13]
In 2015, Mundell joined the University of Bath, and was Head of the Department of Physics from 2016 to 2018. [14] She established a new Astrophysics research group, concentrating on high-energy extragalactic astrophysics of black hole driven systems and their environments. [15] [16] She uses the NASA Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to detect short-lived gamma ray bursts. [17] She regularly discusses her research with the public. [18] [19] In 2017 she arranged a scientific discussion meeting on "The promises of gravitational-wave astronomy" at the Royal Society. [20]
Since 2015, she has been a member of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and chair of the STFC Skills and Engagement Advisory Board. [21] [22] [23] She is a member of the Research Councils UK Public Engagement with Research Advisory Panel. [24]
Mundell is involved with several campaigns to improve representation of women in astronomy. [25] In 2016, Mundell won the Woman of the Year Award at the FDM Everywoman in Technology Awards. [26] [27] [28] Mundell has called for better support for students facing sexual harassment within higher education, and been involved with the UK's 1752 Group. [29] [30]
High-energy astronomy is the study of astronomical objects that release electromagnetic radiation of highly energetic wavelengths. It includes X-ray astronomy, gamma-ray astronomy, extreme UV astronomy, neutrino astronomy, and studies of cosmic rays. The physical study of these phenomena is referred to as high-energy astrophysics.
The Liverpool Telescope (LT) is a two-metre-aperture robotic Ritchey–Chrétien telescope that observes autonomously. However professional astronomers, school groups and other credible registered users submit specifications to be considered by its robotic control system (RCS) at any time using an online graphical user interface. Each night the RCS decides among these choices, and among any notified or glimpsed transient events, what to observe, based on target visibility and weather conditions.
Andreja Gomboc, is a Slovenian astrophysicist.
RoboNet-1.0 was a prototype global network of UK-built 2-metre robotic telescopes, the largest of their kind in the world, comprising the Liverpool Telescope on La Palma, the Faulkes Telescope North on Maui (Hawaii), and the Faulkes Telescope South in Australia, managed by a consortium of ten UK universities under the lead of Liverpool John Moores University. For the technological aims of integrating a global network to act effectively as a single instrument, and maximizing the scientific return by applying the newest developments in e-Science, RoboNet adopted the intelligent-agent architecture devised and maintained by the eSTAR project.
The Indian Centre for Space Physics (ICSP) is an Indian non-profit research organisation dedicated to carrying out advanced research in astronomy, astrophysics and space science. It is a sister institute of the University of Calcutta and the University of Gour Banga. It is located in the southern part of the city of Kolkata. It is located to its new Integrated campus on the Eastern metropolitan bypass 70 meters from Jyotirindra Nandy Metro station behind Metro Cash and Carry. Its Ionospheric and Earthquake Research Centre and optical observatory (IERCOO) where a 24-inch optical telescope (Vashista) has been installed is located at Sitapur, West Medinipur, where Astrotourism facility is opened. School and college students regularly carry out sky watching using its 10-inch telescope (Arundhati). The ground floor of the Integrated Campus has Museum of Astronomy and Space Museum.
Dame Margaret Ebunoluwa Aderin-Pocock is a British space scientist and science educator. She is an honorary research associate of University College London's Department of Physics and Astronomy, and has been the chancellor of the University of Leicester since 1 March 2023. Since February 2014, she has co-presented the long-running astronomy television programme The Sky at Night with Chris Lintott. In 2020 she was awarded the William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics for her public engagement in physics. She is the first black woman to win a gold medal in the Physics News Award and she served as the president of the British Science Association from 2021 to 2022.
Alicia Margarita Soderberg is an American astrophysicist whose research focused on supernovae. She was an assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard University and a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Gerald Jay (Jerry) Fishman is an American research astrophysicist, specializing in gamma-ray astronomy. His research interests also include space and nuclear instrumentation and radiation in space. A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Fishman obtained a B.S. with Honors degree in physics from the University of Missouri in 1965, followed by M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in space science from Rice University in 1968 and 1970, respectively.
The Astrophysics Research Institute (ARI) is an astronomy and astrophysics research institute in Merseyside, UK. Formed in 1992, it stood on the Twelve Quays site in Birkenhead from 1998 until June 2013 when it relocated to the Liverpool Science Park in Liverpool. It is in the top 1% of institutions in the field of space science as measured by total citations.
James Scott Dunlop is a Scottish astronomer and academic. He is Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy at the Institute for Astronomy, an institute within the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh.
Vassiliki Kalogera is a Greek astrophysicist. She is a professor at Northwestern University and the director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). She is a leading member of the LIGO Collaboration that observed gravitational waves in 2015.
Lynn Cominsky is an American astrophysicist and educator. She was the Chair of Astronomy and Physics at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California from August 2004 through August 2019. She is currently the Project Director for the NASA Education and Public Outreach Group.
Hiranya Vajramani Peiris is a British astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, where she holds the Professorship of Astrophysics (1909). She is best known for her work on the cosmic microwave background radiation, and interdisciplinary links between cosmology and high-energy physics. She was one of 27 scientists who received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2018 for their "detailed maps of the early universe".
Serena Viti is a professor at Leiden University and previously was a professor and the head of Astrophysics at University College London. In March 2019 she received an ERC Advanced Grant for her MOPPEX proposal.
Suzanne Aigrain is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She studies exoplanets and stellar variability.
Reshmi Mukherjee is an Indian-American astrophysicist known for her research on gamma-ray astronomy and blazars, involving work based on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, VERITAS, Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET), and Cherenkov Telescope Array collaborations. She is Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Barnard College.
Elizabeth Anne Hays is an American astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she is chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory and the project scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Her research has included gamma-ray astronomy of the Crab Nebula, novae, and gamma-ray bursts.
Filippo Frontera is an Italian astrophysicist and professor, who deals with astronomical investigations on celestial gamma-rays.
Mary Paula Chadwick is a British physicist who is professor and head of the Department of Physics at Durham University. Her research investigates gamma-ray astronomy and astroparticle physics. She is involved with the Cherenkov Telescope Array.
Patricia Schady is a British astrophysicist specializing in gamma-ray bursts and their host galaxies. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Bath.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link)