Group Members

Simon Daley-Yates

Postdoctoral Researcher

A headshot of Simon Daley-Yates, a white man with light brown hair and a beard. He wears a black shirt with white dots.

Simon is an early career academic who specialises in high-performance computation for astrophysical applications. Working in this field requires the use of modern, numerical computational techniques to extract the highest levels of efficiency from current computing resources.
After graduating from The University of York in the summer of 2014 with a first class MPhys degree in Theoretical Physics, he began studies towards a doctorate in Astrophysics in September of 2014, within the field of Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) evolution of stellar and planetary atmospheres and their environments. This required both HPC elements and data analysis. The doctorate was obtained in the Autumn of 2018.
Afterwards his PhD he began a role as a post-doc researcher investigating exoplanetary atmospheric dynamics at the French national centre for HPC excellence; Maison de la Simulation, CEA-Saclay, France, where he aided the development of high performance codes for petabyte-scale simulations, using heterogeneous programming frameworks. This position ended in Autumn 2020, after which he worked in a role within the SKA Consortium helping to develop the SDP prototype and pipelines.
From April 2021, he has been working with the Cool Stars group at St Andrews
under Prof. Moira Jardine, applying his knowledge of computation MHD to study the
stability of stellar prominences.

Please see his website for images and information on his research (sddyates.github.io)

Rose F. P. Waugh

4th year PhD student

A black and white photo of Rose Waugh, a white person with long, dyed blonde hair. They have a nose ring and are wearing a pearl string necklace and black tshirt.

Rose completed their undergraduate degree in Theoretical Physics in 2017 from the University of St Andrews. Despite their degree choice, they undertook their Master’s dissertation under the watchful eye of Moira, on the topic of prominence formation on rapidly rotating young suns. Having seen the light, they applied for PhDs in astrophysics in the area of stellar magnetic fields and found themself destined for another few years in sunny St Andrews. Their research is still focused on modelling prominence formation in rapidly rotating, young suns, and whilst still particularly fond of the star AB Doradus they have since branched out to consider M-dwarfs too. Outside of physics, you can find them whiling away time in the local bookshop and filling up their phone memory with endless photos of their pets and toddler.

Sarah Faller

2nd year PhD student

A headshot of Sarah Faller. A white woman with shoulder length dark brown hair. She wears glasses and a pink t-shirt.

Sarah joined the group as a Master’s student studying astrophysics at the University of St Andrews. She became interested in Stellar magnetism in the 3rd year of her undergraduate degree when researching the Solar cycle and how sunspots are formed. She later branched out into looking at magnetic activity in brown dwarfs and hopes to someday gain a good understanding of dynamo processes in both fully and partially convective stars. She is now a PhD student in the group, where she has recently been using solar maps to model prominence behaviour in young solar-like stars.

Clara Brasseur

1st year PhD student

headshot of Clara Brasseur, a white person with short brown hair. They are wearing a blue plaid shirt.

Clara joined the group as a PhD student in fall 2021, working on combining modeling and observational data to explore magnetic fields on cool stars. Clara completed their undergraduate degree in 2008, obtaining a BA in Astrophysics and Music composition from Oberlin College. They then completed a Master’s in Music Composition from Mills College in 2010 before returning to technical work first as an applied mathematician, and then as a software engineer at the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). While at MAST Clara worked on a variety of software tools including the popular TESScut service for creating astronomical cutouts from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. While at MAST, Clara also completed an astrophysics MSc from the Liverpool John Moores University in 2019. More information can be found on their website https://ceb8.github.io/.

 

Past Members:

Dr Kristin Lund

A headshot of Kristin Lund, a white woman with shoulder length blonde hair. She wears a white t-shirt.

 

Dr Lisa T. Lehmann – Université de Toulouse

A photo of Lisa Lehmann, a white woman with long brown hair. She wears a black tshirt and a blue bandana around her neck. She also wears a lanyard and name badge from the conference she is attending.

Lisa finished her Bachelor degree in Physics at the Universität Potsdam in 2013. For her Bachelor thesis, she measured the magnetic field and its variations on the K2 dwarf Epsilon Eridani. This was done using intensity spectra of the robotic telescope “Stella”, under the supervision of Prof. Klaus G. Strassmeier at the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik. During her Physics Masters degree at the Universität Potsdam, she had the possibility to visit Prof. Moira Jardine at the University of St Andrews to do a 6-months research project. This project grew up into her Masters thesis project, where Lisa examined if starspots could mimic the observed signature of azimuthal magnetic field rings found on cool stars, under the supervision of Prof. Moira Jardine and Prof. Klaus Strassmeier.
Lisa started her PhD degree in Astrophysics at the University of St Andrews in November 2015 under the supervision of Prof. Moira Jardine. She explored the magnetic field morphology of cool stars at various lengths scales. In the final year of her PhD, she applied the observing technique Zeeman-Doppler-Imaging to 3D non-potential magnetic field simulations to illuminate the interpretation of cool stars magnetic field observations.
Next to working on magnetic fields, Lisa enjoys canoeing on the Scottish Lochs and exploring the remote places of Scotland.

Dr Carolina Villarreal D’Angelo – Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba

Dr Victor See – University of Exeter

 

Bsc/Msc project students; Rosamund Fleming, Anushri Kohli, Ben Warwick, Kieran Stuart, Calum Waines, Hannah Sanderson