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 (MOlecules as Probes of the Physics of EXternal galaxies). [1]
Viti was an undergraduate at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, where she gained a BSc in Astrophysics in 1994. She was awarded a PhD from University College London (UCL) for her work on the infrared spectra of cool stars and sunspots in 1997. [2] After her PhD, Viti became a post-doctoral fellow at UCL in the field of star formation and astrochemistry, followed by a fixed-term lectureship at the CNR in Rome as a Herschel Scientist. She returned to UCL in October 2003 for an STFC Advanced Fellowship and became a lecturer of Astrophysics in 2004. She was promoted to Reader in 2007 and to Professor of Astrophysics in 2012. Viti became head of the Astrophysics department at UCL in 2016. [3] In July 2020 Leiden University (the Netherlands) announced that the Leiden Observatory has appointed Viti a chair in Molecular Astrophysics. [4]
Viti is on the editorial board for Molecular Astrophysics. [5] She is the current secretary of the European Astronomical Society, [6] was a Royal Astronomical Society council member (2002-2005), and serves on several STFC panels and committees. [7] [8] The central focus of her research is in the field of astrochemistry and the study of molecules in space. [9] She is a member of the International Astronomical Union, [10] the Royal Astronomical Society, the European Astronomical Society [11] and the Astrophysical Chemistry Society. She led an exhibition on astrochemistry at the 2004 Royal Society Summer Exhibition. [12] Viti has co-authored a book on observational molecular astronomy. [13]
Viti was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Fowler Award for Astronomy in 2006 [14] and the Australian Astronomical Observatory Distinguished Visitor Fellowship in 2015. [15]
Ewine Fleur van Dishoeck is a Dutch astronomer and chemist. She is Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at Leiden Observatory, and served as the President of the International Astronomical Union (2018–2021) and a co-editor of the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics (2012–present). She is one of the pioneers of astrochemistry, and her research is aimed at determination of the structure of cosmic objects using their molecular spectra.
Dame Carole Jordan,, is a British physicist, astrophysicist, astronomer and academic. Currently, she is Professor Emeritus of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford. From 1994 to 1996, she was President of the Royal Astronomical Society; she was the first woman to hold this appointment. She won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2005; she was only the third female recipient following Caroline Herschel in 1828 and Vera Rubin in 1996. She was head of the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford from 2003 to 2004 and 2005 to 2008, and was one of the first female professors in Astronomy in Britain. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for services to physics and astronomy.
Alexander Dalgarno FRS was a British physicist who was a Phillips Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University.
Françoise Combes is a French astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory and a professor at the Collège de France where she has been the chair of Galaxies and cosmology since 2014.
The National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) is an annual scientific conference of astronomers, usually held in the British Isles. It is sponsored and coordinated by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), and functions as the primary annual meeting of the society. NAM is one of the largest professional astronomy conferences in Europe, with typically around 600 delegates attending.
Warrick John Couch is an Australian professional astronomer. He is currently a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. He was previously the Director of Australia's largest optical observatory, the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO). He was also the president of the Australian Institute of Physics (2015–2017), and a non-executive director on the Board of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization. He was a founding non-executive director of Astronomy Australia Limited.
Pascale Ehrenfreund is an Austrian astrophysicist. Ehrenfreund holds degrees from the University of Vienna and Webster Leiden. Prior to becoming a Research Professor of Space Policy and International Affairs at George Washington University, she was a professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, Leiden University, and University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. She was the first woman president of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and from 2015-2020, she was the CEO of the German Aerospace Center. Since 2019, she is the President of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and since 2018, she is the Chancellor of the International Space University (ISU). Since 2021 she is president of the ISU. The main-belt asteroid 9826 Ehrenfreund is named in her honor. She is the President of Committee on Space Research from 2022 to 2026.
Karin Ingegerd Öberg is a Swedish astrochemist. She is a Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and leader of the Öberg Astrochemistry Group at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Her research concerns star formation, planet formation, and stellar evolution in relation to organic molecules, which are necessary to determine the origins of life on Earth and elsewhere. In April 2015, her group discovered the first complex organic molecule in a protoplanetary disk.
Emmanuel H. Hugot is a French astrophysicist, deputy director at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille. known for his contribution to the developments of new technologies that help to improve telescopes used by professional astronomers around the world. This includes the development of more efficient curved detectors, but also improvements in the manufacturing methods for optical elements and active optics systems. The technologies developed by Hugot and his group are used on the SPHERE instrument mounted on the European Very Large Telescope, as well as the coronagraphic instrument of the future NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which are used to detect exoplanets.
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".
Carole Mundell is an observational astrophysicist who researches cosmic black holes and gamma ray bursts.
Anna Louise Watts is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam. She studies neutron stars and their thermonuclear explosions.
David Arnold Williams is a retired British astrochemist and Emeritus Perren Professor of Astronomy at University College London.
Emma J. Bunce is a British space physicist and Professor of Planetary Plasma Physics at the University of Leicester. She holds a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. Her research is on the magnetospheres of Saturn and Jupiter. She is principal investigator (PI) of the MIXS instrument on BepiColombo, was deputy lead on the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer proposal, and co-investigator on the Cassini–Huygens mission.
Lidia van Driel-Gesztelyi is a Hungarian solar scientist and professor of physics at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory of University College London. She also maintains affiliations with Solar and Stellar Activity Research Team at Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Space Research Laboratory (LESIA) of Paris Observatory. She has been Editor-in-Chief of the journal Solar Physics since 2005 and has served in leadership roles within the International Astronomical Union.
Lucy Marie Ziurys is an American astrochemist known for her work on high-resolution molecular spectroscopy. She is Regent's Professor of Chemistry & Biology and of Astronomy at the University of Arizona.
Frank Eisenhauer is a German astronomer and astrophysicist, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), and a professor at Technical University of Munich. He is best known for his contributions to interferometry and spectroscopy and the study of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
Paola Caselli is an Italian astronomer and astrochemist known for her research on molecular clouds, star formation and planet formation, and the astrochemistry behind the materials found within the Solar System. She is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics near Munich in Germany. She also holds an honorary professorship at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Caitríona M. Jackman is an Irish space physicist. In 2021, she became the first female senior professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) Dunsink Observatory. She has made important contributions to understanding the solar wind interactions with planetary magnetospheres.
Erminia Calabrese, FLSW, is a Professor of Astronomy and the Director of Research at Cardiff University School of Physics and Astronomy. She works in observational cosmology using the cosmic microwave background radiation to understand the origins and evolution of the universe. In 2024 she became a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and in 2022 she was awarded the Institute of Physics Fred Hoyle medal and the Learned Society of Wales Dillwyn medal.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
