UA News

Alicia M. Soderberg, from Harvard University, will visit the University of Arizona as a UA ADVANCE Junior Scientist Speaker and will give a public lecture on her research as part of the Steward Observatory Public Evening Lecture Series. Jill Bechtold, professor of astronomy and an astronomer at the Steward Observatory nominated her for the UA ADVANCE Junior Scientist award.

Soderberg received her PhD in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology in June 2007. Her research focuses on the endpoints of stellar evolution, especially the deaths of stars 10 to 20 times more massive than the sun. These stars live very brief lives by cosmic standards – a million years or less – then explode catastrophically, as supernovae or gamma-ray bursts. Why only some supernovae develop the relativistic jets characteristic of gamma-ray bursts is one of the interesting unsolved questions in astronomy, and Soderberg is a leading scientist working on this problem. Cosmic explosions capture the public's imagination, and Soderberg has described her research in numerous public forums, through interviews for the BBC, articles in Skyu and Telescope, Science Magazine, Astronomy Magazine, Science News and New Scientist. She is the winner of the 2009 Annie Jump Cannon prestigious award given by the American Astronomical Society for "outstanding research and promise for future research."

Soderberg’s lecture is titled "X-rays Mark the Spot: The Birth of a Supernova."