Sarafina Nance

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

(1993-03-25) March 25, 1993 (age 33) [2]
Austin, Texas
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 [3] astrophysicist [4] [5] [6] and science communicator. She was formerly a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley and has now graduated. [7] [8] Her research investigates supernovae and their applications to cosmology. Nance is known for her use of social media, in particular Twitter, [9] Instagram [10] and LinkedIn [6] 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. [11] [12]

Contents

Early life and education

Nance grew up in Austin, Texas. [7] 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. [13] She has said that her St. Stephen's Episcopal School's high school physics teacher, Frank Mikan, encouraged her love of space science. [13]

In 2016, Nance received a dual Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016. [14] Her undergraduate honors thesis was on A Theoretical Investigation of Supernovae Progenitors and advised by J. Craig Wheeler. [14] There she used asteroseismology to understand stars that were about to undergo a supernova. [7] Her research focussed on Betelgeuse. [15] [16] [13] 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. [13]

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. [13] In particular, Nance studies the evolutionary state of Betelgeuse. [17] 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. [18] [19] [20]

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. [18]

Science communication

During the first year of her undergraduate degree Nance worked as an intern at the McDonald Observatory. [13] After starting her doctoral degree, Nance took to her science communication online. [17] One of her viral tweets on Twitter, which highlighted how important failure was in science, was picked up by Sundar Pichai. [21]

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. [22] 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. [23] [24] [25] After searching for the best local surgeons, Nance identified Anne Peled, a Californian reconstructive surgeon who was also a survivor of breast cancer. [22] Nance underwent the surgery in 2019. [22]

On January 15, 2021, Seeker released the internet television astronomy series Constellations, hosted by Nance. [8] [26]

Nance's memoir Starstruck was published in 2023. [11] which explains various aspects of astronomy alongside telling her experiences growing up and entering a career in astronomy. [3]

Selected publications

According to Google Scholar [4] and Scopus, [5] 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. ↑ El-Badry Nance, Sarafina. Starstruck: A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark. Dutton Signet, 2023
  3. 1 2 Corbyn, Zoe (2023). "Astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance: 'I'll probably always live with impostor syndrome'". theguardian.com. The Observer . Retrieved 2023-08-14.
  4. 1 2 Sarafina Nance publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  5. 1 2 Sarafina Nance publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  6. 1 2 Sarafina Nance on LinkedIn OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. ↑ Sarafina Nance on X OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  10. ↑ Sarafina Nance on Instagram OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  11. 1 2 Nance, Sarafina El-Badry (2023). Starstruck: A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark. Penguin Group. ISBN   9780593186800. OCLC   1381363333.
  12. ↑ Nance, Sarafina El-Badry (2023). "A Memoir of Astrophysics: Talks at Google". youtube.com.
  13. 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.
  14. 1 2 Nance, Sarafina (2016). A Theoretical Investigation of Supernovae Progenitors. utexas.edu (BS). University of Texas at Austin. hdl:2152/35286.
  15. 1 2 Wheeler, J. Craig; Nance, S.; Diaz, M.; Smith, S. G.; Hickey, J.; Zhou, L.; Koutoulaki, M.; Sullivan, J. M.; Fowler, J. M. (2017). "The Betelgeuse Project: Constraints from rotation". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 465 (3): 2654–2661. arXiv: 1611.08031 . doi: 10.1093/MNRAS/STW2893 .
  16. 1 2 Nance, S.; Sullivan, J. M.; Diaz, M.; Wheeler, J Craig (2018). "The Betelgeuse Project II: Asteroseismology". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 479: 251–261. arXiv: 1805.10347 . doi: 10.1093/MNRAS/STY1418 .
  17. 1 2 "Keynote Speaker: Sarafina Nance". womeninspacecon.com. May 2020. Archived from the original on 2020-06-07. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  18. 1 2 Anon (2021). "C3 Student Researcher Honored by Forbes Magazine". lbl.gov. Computational Cosmology Center. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
  19. ↑ 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.
  20. ↑ Anon (1 February 2020). "Daya daga cikin manyan taurari na 'dab da yin bindiga'" (in Hausa). BBC News Hausa.
  21. ↑ "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.
  22. 1 2 3 Butterly, Amelia (2020). "'I have sensation in my breasts again'". bbc.com. BBC News.
  23. ↑ Nance, Sarafina (21 November 2019). "I lost my breasts, but an early test saved my life". sfchronicle.com. San Francisco Chronicle.
  24. ↑ Rasmus, Allie (27 November 2019). "26-year-old Bay Area woman opts for preventative double mastectomy". ktvu.com. KTVU.
  25. ↑ Murray, Jeni (2020-03-07). "The power of crying, Hubble astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, Children and Coronavirus". bbc.co.uk. BBC Woman's Hour.
  26. ↑ "Seeker on Twitter". twitter.com. 15 January 2021. Retrieved 15 January 2021.


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