I am an assistant professor in the astrophysics division
of the Department of Physics
at MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

I also a member of the
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research


Me under the Chilean night sky in front of the Magellan-Clay
telescope while observing the oldest stars; March 2010.
Image credit: G. Furesz

My contact details
My CV
My publications


From January 2009 to December 2011 I was a Clay Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA

From October 2006 to December 2008 I was the W. J. McDonald Postdoctoral Fellow of the McDonald Observatory & Department of Astronomy of the University of Texas at Austin.

In September 2006, I completed my PhD thesis at the Mt. Stromlo Observatory of the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

News:

A new feature article in "Sterne und Weltraum" (German version of Sky and Telescope):

I wrote another 10 page popular science article featuring the stellar archaeology and the oldest stars in the Milky Way and dwarf galaxies (in German, sorry).

My science even made it to the title (see title page on the left) and the editorial all about my article!

It has appeared in the current July 2010 issue of Sterne und Weltraum (German version of Sky and Telescope). Check it out! Email me for the full version.







Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A wonderful article SCIENCE "Unwinding the Milky Way" about metal-poor stars and my work (inlcuding the new Sculptor star) by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee can be found here (Science Vol 327, pp 1194-1195)





At the Americal Astronomical Society meeting in January 2010, it was announced that I will be receiving the 2010 Annie Jump Cannon Award (see some announcement of the AAS). I have to give a plenary lecture at one of the next society meetings and will then receive the actual award. I am looking forward to it!
A short CfA News Feature can be found here.

After the announcement I met one of the astronauts, John Grunsfeld, who repaired the Hubble Space Telescope including the spectrograph STIS that I'll be using this summer to observe the metal-poor star HE1523-0901. Those observations are remotely done, though, so I won't get to go into space :)

Astronaut John Grunsfeld and me at the AAS banquet! It took place at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.



In 2009, I was also awarded the Ludwig Biermann Young Astronomer Award of the German Astronomical Society!
In September, I received the award at the annual German Astronomical Society meeting in Potsdam, Germany. I gave gave a Biermann lecture which will be published in the Astronomische Nachrichten (Astronomical News) as well as in the Reviews in Modern Astronomy.
More information on the award can be found here.
Previous recipients of the award can be found here.
A short CfA News Feature can be found here.


Recent outreach activities:


A science festival presentation @ XLAB

In January 2009, I gave the opening talk at the 2009 XLAB Science Festival in Goettingen, Germany. It was a lot of fun talking to an audience of ~350 high-school students from local and regional schools about the oldest stars and the chemical evolution of the Universe.


At the XLAB Science Festival. Talking with Dr. Eva-Maria Neher, the festival organizer (on the far left). Copyright @ XLAB, 2009



A feature article:

I recently wrote a 9 page popular science article featuring the oldest stars in the universe and the chemical evolution of the Milky Way (in German, sorry) that appeared in the September 2008 issue of Spektrum der Wissenschaft (German version of Scientific American). Check it out! Email me for the full version. And yes, the article was mentioned at the top left corner on the title page...!








And giving a talk at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 2009.


last updated: Feb 2010