Profile

My CV

• Education:

  I started school in Cape Town just as apartheid was coming to an end in South Africa. Due to this, my first school, like everything in South Africa, was segregated by race. My school, Welcome Primary School, was also under-resourced, in keeping with the laws of the time. I attended this school for 6 years, before going Pinelands Primary School, a formally whites only school in a white suburb. After two years there, I then went on to Pinelands High School, in the same suburb.
  For university studies, I went to the University of Cape Town and the University of Southampton.

• Qualifications:

  I finished high school and obtained my National Senior Certificate in 2002. My undergraduate degree is in physics. I switched to doing my postgraduate masters degree in astronomy. And I obtained my PhD in 2013.

• Work History:

  I have worked as a postdoctoral researcher (someone who has a doctorate, but does not yet have a permanent job) at several places. First I worked in the astronomy department at the University of Cape Town for 3. Then I moved to the South African Astronomical Observatory, still in Cape Town. For part of my time at SAAO, I was actually working at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas as a Fulbright Visiting Research Fellow. I moved to Manchester to carry on my research at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester.
  Throughout my postgraduate studies and research career, I have also been very active in science communication and public engagement.

• Current Job:

  In 2018, I started my own STEM communications and consulting company, AstroComms. This is my full time job a the moment.