Sarafina Nance

Last updated
Sarafina Nance
Sarafina Nance Headshot (cropped).jpg
Sarafina Nance in 2020
Born
Sarafina El-Badry Nance [1]

1992or1993(age 32–33) [2]
Austin, Texas
Nationality American
Education St. Stephen's Episcopal School
Alma mater University of Texas at Austin (BS)
University of California, Berkeley (MS, PhD)
Occupation Astrophysicist
Scientific career
Thesis A Theoretical Investigation of Supernovae Progenitors  (2016)
Website starafina.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Sarafina El-Badry Nance is an Egyptian-American [2] astrophysicist [3] [4] [5] and science communicator. She was formerly a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley and has now graduated. [6] [7] Her research investigates supernovae and their applications to cosmology. Nance is known for her use of social media, in particular Twitter, [8] Instagram [9] and LinkedIn [5] where she discusses astrophysics and activism. She is also an advocate for women's health and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Her memoir Starstruck was published in 2023. [10] [11]

Contents

Early life and education

Nance grew up in Austin, Texas. [6] She became interested in the Solar System as a child, and used to listen to StarDate on the radio on her way home from school. [12] She has said that her St. Stephen's Episcopal School's high school physics teacher, Frank Mikan, encouraged her love of space science. [12]

In 2016, Nance received a dual Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016. [13] Her undergraduate honors thesis was on A Theoretical Investigation of Supernovae Progenitors and advised by J. Craig Wheeler. [13] There she used asteroseismology to understand stars that were about to undergo a supernova. [6] Her research focussed on Betelgeuse. [14] [15] [12] While an undergraduate student at Austin, Nance was named a Dean's Honour scholarship and took part in a National Science Foundation (NSF) summer program at Harvard University. [12]

In 2017, Nance moved to the University of California, Berkeley for her graduate studies, where she investigates supernovae and uses them as a means to study both the make-up and ultimate fate of the universe. Here she earned an Master of Science (MS) degree in astronomy, before beginning a doctoral programme. [12] In particular, Nance studies the evolutionary state of Betelgeuse. [16] She works with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Centre for Computational Cosmology to use supercomputers to build models of the explosions of supernovae in their final stages. [17] [18] [19]

Career and research

In March 2021, Nance was listed by Forbes magazine as one of 30 inspirational women as part of Women's History Month. [17]

Science communication

During the first year of her undergraduate degree Nance worked as an intern at the McDonald Observatory. [12] After starting her doctoral degree, Nance took to her science communication online. [16] One of her viral tweets on Twitter, which highlighted how important failure was in science, was picked up by Sundar Pichai. [20]

Nance is an activist for women's health. In her early 20s it was identified that she had inherited the BRCA2 gene from her father, which is known to be a predictor of breast cancer. [21] Nance used a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to cover the cost of a double mastectomy, and her social media platform to advocate for early and frequent testing as well as preventive medicine. [22] [23] [24] After searching for the best local surgeons, Nance identified Anne Peled, a Californian reconstructive surgeon who was also a survivor of breast cancer. [21] Nance underwent the surgery in 2019. [21]

On January 15, 2021, Seeker released the internet television astronomy series Constellations, hosted by Nance. [7] [25]

Nance's memoir Starstruck was published in 2023. [10] which explains various aspects of astronomy alongside telling her experiences growing up and entering a career in astronomy. [2]

Selected publications

According to Google Scholar [3] and Scopus, [4] her most cited publications include:

References

  1. ↑ @starstrickenSF (2020-09-11). "My name is Sarafina El-Badry Nance. This is the first time I've said my full name in public. Ever.⁣
    I talk about disavowing my Arabic heritage for most of my life post-9/11, too scared and too embarrassed to embrace my identity and heritage here"     (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  2. 1 2 3 Corbyn, Zoe (2023). "Astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance: 'I'll probably always live with impostor syndrome'". theguardian.com. The Observer . Retrieved 2023-08-14.
  3. 1 2 Sarafina Nance publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  4. 1 2 Sarafina Nance publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  5. 1 2 Sarafina Nance on LinkedIn OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  6. 1 2 3 Nance, Sarafina El-Badry (2020). "Graduate Students in the Department of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley". astro.berkeley.edu. University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original on 2020-02-17.
  7. 1 2 Nance, Sarafina El-Badry (15 January 2021). "Constellations - Here's Why Zodiac Constellations Are Still Used in Astronomy". youtube.com. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  8. ↑ Sarafina Nance on Twitter OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  9. ↑ Sarafina Nance on Instagram OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  10. 1 2 Nance, Sarafina El-Badry (2023). Starstruck: A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark. Penguin Group. ISBN   9780593186800. OCLC   1381363333.
  11. ↑ Nance, Sarafina El-Badry (2023). "A Memoir of Astrophysics: Talks at Google". youtube.com.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Newman, Shawna (2020-03-02). "Highlighting Women in STEM: Sarafina Nance, Supernovae Scientist & Cosmologist, Astrophysics Ph.D. Candidate". fastweb.com.
  13. 1 2 Nance, Sarafina (2016). A Theoretical Investigation of Supernovae Progenitors. utexas.edu (BS). University of Texas at Austin. hdl:2152/35286.
  14. 1 2 Wheeler J. C.; Nance S.; Diaz M.; et al. (2017). "The Betelgeuse Project: constraints from rotation". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 465: 2654–2661. arXiv: 1611.08031 . Bibcode:2017MNRAS.465.2654W. doi:10.1093/MNRAS/STW2893. ISSN   0035-8711. Wikidata   Q68755650.
  15. 1 2 Nance S.; Sullivan J. M.; Diaz M.; Wheeler J. C. (2018). "The Betelgeuse Project II: asteroseismology". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 479: 251–261. arXiv: 1805.10347 . Bibcode:2018MNRAS.479..251N. doi:10.1093/MNRAS/STY1418. ISSN   0035-8711. Wikidata   Q68997922.
  16. 1 2 "Keynote Speaker: Sarafina Nance". womeninspacecon.com. May 2020. Archived from the original on 2020-06-07. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  17. 1 2 Anon (2021). "C3 Student Researcher Honored by Forbes Magazine". lbl.gov. Computational Cosmology Center. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
  18. ↑ Drake, Nadia (2019-12-26). "A giant star is acting strange, and astronomers are buzzing". nationalgeographic.com. National Geographic. Archived from the original on December 26, 2019.
  19. ↑ Anon (1 February 2020). "Daya daga cikin manyan taurari na 'dab da yin bindiga'" (in Hausa). BBC News Hausa.
  20. ↑ "Google CEO Sundar Pichai finds astrophysicist's viral post about scoring zero marks in exam 'inspiring'; Twitter responds to thread". firstpost.com. 24 November 2019.
  21. 1 2 3 Butterly, Amelia (2020). "'I have sensation in my breasts again'". bbc.com. BBC News.
  22. ↑ Nance, Sarafina (21 November 2019). "I lost my breasts, but an early test saved my life". sfchronicle.com. San Francisco Chronicle.
  23. ↑ Rasmus, Allie (27 November 2019). "26-year-old Bay Area woman opts for preventative double mastectomy". ktvu.com. KTVU.
  24. ↑ Murray, Jeni (2020-03-07). "The power of crying, Hubble astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, Children and Coronavirus". bbc.co.uk. BBC Woman's Hour.
  25. ↑ "Seeker on Twitter". twitter.com. 15 January 2021. Retrieved 15 January 2021.


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