Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell CH is an astrophysicist celebrated for a breakthrough scientific discovery she made in the late 1960s. The focus of her PhD was to study quasars – very bright astronomical objects at the centre of some galaxies. Serendipitously she discovered a series of extremely regular radio pulses, only seconds apart, emanating from a new class of stars. These proved to be rapidly spinning neutron stars, later called pulsars by the press, opening up a new area of physics and astronomy.
Together with her subsequent astronomical career, Professor Dame Jocelyn’s achievements led to her being voted most inspirational living female scientist by New Scientist readers. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society, was the first woman to be elected President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, received her Damehood in 2007 for services to astronomy, and in 2025 was appointed Companion of Honour for services to astronomy and physics and to diversity. She served as Chancellor of the University of Dundee until 2024.
Elizabeth Charlton has a doctorate in physics specialising in astronomy and astrophysics with areas of interest that include the use of radio astronomy techniques to study magnetic effects in star formation regions and the use of planetaria in multidisciplinary education. She continues her involvement in physics and astronomy education working with OUSSA and Oxford Lifelong Learning teaching astronomy subjects.
Dr Suman Chowdhury holds a doctorate in geophysics from the University of Oxford, and has broad expertise in ground and space based remote sensing methods. His field experience includes the geophysical survey of the Chicxulub asteroid impact crater in Mexico.
Dr Chowdhury is a Fellow of both the Geological Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, and a member of the International Astronomical Union.
Dr Rob Fender is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford. He was Head of Astrophysics at Oxford from 2019 to 2024 before which he was at the University of Southampton, and the Universiteit van Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Since 2010 he holds a position as a Visiting Professor at The University of Cape Town.
His particular research interests are in the areas of accretion and feedback around relativistic objects, mostly advanced via observations with radio telescopes such as AMI-LA, e-MERLIN and MeerKAT.
As well as targeted studies, he is also involved in wide field commensal searches for radio transients, population studies and modelling of the phenomena we see.
In a distinguished career, highlights include winning the 2020 Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and he has been a recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Prize, a Marie Curie Fellowship, an NWO VIDI prize, and a Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship.
In December 2022 he, Sera Markoff and Heino Falcke were awarded a 14 million Euro ERC Synergy Grant, 'Blackholistic', to bring together our understanding of black holes on all mass scales. A key component of this project will be the construction of The African Millimetre Telescope (AMT) in Namibia which will both extend dramatically the baseline coverage of the Event Horizon Telescope, and work as a stand-alone transients monitoring facility.
Dr. Matthew Malek holds a doctorate in physics and astronomy, with a specialisation in astroparticle physics – where the study of nature’s smallest scales (particle physics) overlaps with the study of the largest scales (astronomy). Over the course of his career, he has worked on neutrino astronomy at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan, ultra-high energy cosmic rays at the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, and searched for dark matter at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. When at home in the UK, he is also a keen amateur astronomer, with a particular interest in solar telescopes.
I'm interested in all aspects of planetary evolution, and in particular the role of iron in determining the initiation and persistence of life on Earth.
This interest has spanned experimental work on the segregation of our planet's metallic core (unarguably the biggest geological event in Earth history), to its possible role in keeping water on our planet's surface for timescales relevant to evolution. In fact, since it no longer rains on Mars, I'd quite like to answer the big question of 'why do I have wet feet today?'
My work has encompassed a lot of microanalyses by a variety of techniques, including electron, X-ray and mass spectrometry methods and has touched on the abiogenic synthesis of biological compounds at the dawn of life. In collaboration with colleagues in Immunology, we're developing of methods to rapidly analyse single particles (cells) for their elemental content, and particularly their iron. Our key aim is to provide a robust tool to analyse the abundance of iron in biological systems at a cell-population level and hence how this may influence the progression of disease.
I've worked in a variety of industries and have what might be termed an 'alternative route' into Academia. I have a keen interest in understanding the barriers to entry into Academia (and Oxford in particular) and means by which they may be minimised.
