Profile

I love anything to do with space and I find the night sky fascinating. From black holes to stars and galaxies. I also frequently do planetarium shows telling mythical stories from the Greeks about how some constellations ended up in the night sky and taking them on a journey through time and space. Astronomy pictures are always beautiful.

I love to go on walks around lakes, in the woods and on the beach. It’s fun to see all the different creatures and plants you can find.

I read lots of different books from fantasy, dystopian to thrillers.

I am a big fan of 80s movies, sci-fi movies, fantasy movies.

TV shows wise I am a huge Dr Who fan, probably no surprise considering I study space

Specifically, i look at the shape of cold gas around black holes and how this can feed a black hole or even starve it. I want to find out how the gas got into the shape it has, how this affects the galaxy that hosts the black hole inside and see if i can help put together some pieces of the puzzle that is the Universe. I use a telescope in Chile called the Atacama Large Millimetre Array also known as ALMA.

We have a club of PhD students called ‘Journal Club’ where each week we meet and discuss the results of a new discovery.

Most of my day is spent at a desk looking at data, writing some code or reading background information that i need to know.

Each week we have a presentation given by someone who has a new result, we take it in turns to share our results to a room full of people.

Once we have a result, we get to write it up and share it with the the rest of the world. Being an astronomer is one big collaboration to try figure out what the Universe is doing and how we got here.

I also get to be part of a team that goes out to schools to give them shows in an inflatable planetarium to journey through space and time, telling you stories of the constellations and trying to inspire future generations.