Profile

I study the stars in the sky, and in particular I’m interested in how and where these stars formed, what caused them to form, and how long they’ll live for. All stars are different to each other in some way, but over time we’ve learnt that there are similarities that allow us to group them together by their size, mass or colour. These things tell us about how the stars live and how they’ll die, and I also want to find out what this can tell us about how the stars were born.

One of the ways that I do this is by searching for the youngest stars in the sky, which are often found in groups known as ‘star clusters’. I study how the stars in these groups are arranged, and how they’re moving, to see what this can tell us about how these groups formed. If we can understand how the groups of stars form I think we can understand how the stars themselves formed.

I like to start the day by reading some of the most recent papers published in my field. I find this is a good way to stay in touch with what other scientists around the world are doing. Communication between scientists is very important, so if I’ve read something interesting I will often email the author of the paper to ask a question or share a comment.

Then I might try and find some time to work on one of my papers, getting some fresh thoughts and ideas down on paper, or perhaps making a graph or figure to go in the paper. The graphics are often the most important part of a paper as they share the results with the reader, hopefully in a clear and interesting way.

I often spend most of the afternoon working on my data, either programming or inspecting images of regions in space that I’ms studying. I might intersperse this with chatting to some colleagues about different methods I might try, or what the implications of my results are. This can be a really useful way to get feedback on my work and be continually improving myself.