Claudia Maraston
Alma materUniversity of Bologna
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Portsmouth
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics

Claudia Maraston is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Portsmouth. She designs models for the calculation of spectro-photometric evolution of stellar populations. She is the winner of the 2018 Royal Astronomical Society Eddington Medal.

Education and early career

Maraston completed her postdoctoral studies at the University of Bologna in 1998.[1] She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as well as the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. In 2005 she was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship, which allowed her to join the University of Oxford.

Research

She won a Marie Curie Excellence Team Grant in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded a €1.4 million European Commission grant for UNIMASS.[2] UNIMASS looked at how stellar population models informed galaxy formation.[3] Maraston is interested in calculating the physical properties of galaxies (age, mass, history, epoch of formation) from observational data and galaxy formation simulation. Her Stellar Population Models are available for the public.[4][5] She looks to calculate how much dark matter is present in a galaxy. She establishes the galaxy photometric redshifts (k-) and their corrections (e). She has studied single and composite stellar populations.[6]

She has been part of several large grants from the Science and Technology Facilities Council.[7] She was the architect of the SDSS-III/ Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) project. In 2016 she used this to calculate stellar masses for 400,000 luminous galaxies.[8] BOSS is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and is designed to measure the baryon acoustic oscillations.[9][10] They use her stellar population models.[11] She modelled the UV spectrum of the SDSS-III/ Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey galaxies.[12] In January 2018 she was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Eddington Medal for her investigations into theoretical astrophysics.[13] She is the second woman to win the award since it began in 1953.[14]

Maraston is a popular science communicator, and has taken part in Café Scientifique and written for popular science magazine Astronomy Now.[15][16] She serves on the editorial board of the journal the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.[17]

References

  1. ^ "Claudia Maraston - Portsmouth Research Portal". researchportal.port.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-17.
  2. ^ "UNIMASS - Portsmouth Research Portal". researchportal.port.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-18.
  3. ^ "UniMass | Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation". research.icg.port.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-18.
  4. ^ "Claudia Maraston". www.maraston.eu. Retrieved 2018-10-17.
  5. ^ "Claudia's Stellar Population Models". www.icg.port.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-17.
  6. ^ "Claudia's Stellar Population Models". www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-18.
  7. ^ "Cosmology and Astrophysics at Portsmouth - Portsmouth Research Portal". researchportal.port.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-18.
  8. ^ Maraston, Claudia; Pforr, Janine; Henriques, Bruno M.; Thomas, Daniel; Wake, David; Brownstein, Joel R.; Capozzi, Diego; Tinker, Jeremy; Bundy, Kevin (2013-09-20). "Stellar masses of SDSS-III/BOSS galaxies at z ~ 0.5 and constraints to galaxy formation models". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 435 (4): 2764–2792. arXiv:1207.6114. doi:10.1093/mnras/stt1424. ISSN 1365-2966.
  9. ^ Dawson, Kyle S.; Schlegel, David J.; Ahn, Christopher P.; Anderson, Scott F.; Aubourg, Éric; Bailey, Stephen; Barkhouser, Robert H.; Bautista, Julian E.; Beifiori, Alessandra (2013-01-01). "The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III". The Astronomical Journal. 145 (1): 10. arXiv:1208.0022. doi:10.1088/0004-6256/145/1/10. ISSN 0004-6256.
  10. ^ Dawson, Kyle S.; Schlegel, David J.; Ahn, Christopher P.; Anderson, Scott F.; Aubourg, Éric; Stephen Bailey; Barkhouser, Robert H.; Bautista, Julian E.; Beifiori, Alessandra (2013). "The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III". The Astronomical Journal. 145 (1): 10. arXiv:1208.0022. doi:10.1088/0004-6256/145/1/10. ISSN 1538-3881.
  11. ^ "Stellar Population Models | SDSS". www.sdss.org. Retrieved 2018-10-18.
  12. ^ Cras, Claire Le; Maraston, Claudia; Thomas, Daniel; York, Donald G. (2016-09-01). "Modelling the UV spectrum of SDSS-III/BOSS galaxies: hints towards the detection of the UV upturn at high-z". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 461 (1): 766–793. arXiv:1802.10114. doi:10.1093/mnras/stw1024. ISSN 0035-8711.
  13. ^ "Portsmouth university professor honoured for work on stars and galaxies". Retrieved 2018-10-18.
  14. ^ "RAS Eddington Prize awarded to Prof Claudia Maraston". www.icg.port.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-17.
  15. ^ "Professor Claudia Maraston on Evolution of galaxies - Isle of Wight Cafe Scientifique". Isle of Wight Cafe Scientifique. 2017-04-05. Retrieved 2018-10-18.
  16. ^ "Proof that some galaxies are LIERs – Astronomy Now". astronomynow.com. Retrieved 2018-10-18.
  17. ^ "Prof. Claudia Maraston | The Royal Astronomical Society". ras.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-18.
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