University of St Andrews
Rose Waugh The group enjoyed attending The Cool Stars conference in Toulouse in July!
Every member of the group presented a talk at the conference!
Here we are dressed in aeronautical themed costumes at the conference dinner.
The gang enjoyed meeting up with old friends as well as all of the fantastic science.
You can also see Rose and Moira’s posters from the conference here:
Rose’s poster – Magnetic confinement of cool material inside and outside of the co-rotation radius
A warm welcome to Clara who joined the group as a PhD student. They join us from MAST (Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes) where they worked as a software engineer on multiple tools, including TESScut.
They joins us to work on a combination of modelling and observational work and we’re looking forward to having them and their skills in the group!
We welcome Simon to the group as our new postdoc! Simon will be working on MHD models and prominence formation, and we’re all looking forward to having him and his expertise around.
Congratulations to Kristin who completed her PhD and passed her viva in such tough conditions. This is a huge acomplishment at the best of times, never mind in a pandemic! We’re all delighted for you!
Kristin was soaked down by the beach as per St Andrews tradition alongside Nicole, both pictured below.
We really enjoyed having Hannah Sanderson in our group over the summer of 2020, who completed a summer project with Moira remotely during the pandemic. She was funded by the Cormack Undergraduate Vacation Scholarship. Her summer project focussed on trying to understand if dust in the atmosphere of M dwarfs could be responsible for the strange light curves that are observed.
She wrote about her project for a case study on the RSE website, which you can read in full here. She is currently writing up this project into a journal article.
She is now off to Oxford to start her PhD – best of luck Hannah!
Lisa passed her viva with flying colours (of course!).
Pub celebrations were permitted for those with appropriate attire!
Moira was awarded a prestigious Suffrage Science award for her research into the evolution of our solar system, coupled with her efforts to encourage and support other women to pursue STEM.
Moira said: “I’m delighted to receive this award, which recognises the contribution of women scientists. I hope that it encourages the growing cohort of young women in engineering and the physical sciences.”
Moira was nominated by Professor Lyndsay Fletcher of the University of Glasgow (pictured below, right), who said “Moira is a first-rate scientist, driving research into stellar and planetary systems beyond our own, which is one of the most exciting and high-profile fields in astronomy… She embodies the creativity, rigour and candour of an inspirational scientist, along with large quantities of kindness and good humour. To quote a blogpost I read from an undergraduate physicist who met her, she is for many ‘the woman I will do my best to one day become’.” We couldn’t agree more with Lyndsay!
The Suffrage Science awards occur every 2 years, where 12 female scientists are awarded handmade jewellery (inspired by the Suffrage movement). The pieces of jewellery are passed on from one awardee to another, as heirlooms. Each year the awardees are nominated by the previous awardee, selected for their scientific accomplishments and inspirational qualities. Below are all of the 2019 winners.
You can read more here;
This week we said goodbye to Carolina, who leaves us to take up a Postdoc in Trinity College Dublin, under Prof. Aline Vidotto.
We hope she has a fantastic time – and comes back to visit us soon!
The group attended Cool Stars 2018 in Boston, where we had a great time presenting our research and meeting up with old St Andrean colleagues and friends:
Moira and Andrew dressed in Christmas attire at the staff “Christmas Pie” gathering!
The group enjoyed a festive pub trip (with mandatory Santa hats courtesy of The Boss)!