Amanda Bauer

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Amanda Bauer
File:Amanda Bauer portrait small.jpg
Born (1979-05-26) May 26, 1979 (age 44)[1]
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Residence Australia
Citizenship American
Fields Astronomy
Institutions Australian Astronomical Observatory
Alma mater
Known for AAO Outreach Officer
Notable awards ARC Super Science Fellowship

Amanda Elaine Bauer (born 26 May 1979) is an American professional astronomer and science communicator, currently working in Australia. She is a Research Astronomer at Australia's largest optical observatory, the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO), where her principal field of research concerns how galaxies form, how they create new stars, and particularly why they stop creating new stars. She is better known to the public through her efforts as the AAO Public Outreach Officer.

Early life and education

Bauer grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. She had an interest in astronomy since she was young, and enjoyed the math club in high school, but at the time she did not consider that these could be a career. In college, at the University of Cincinnati, she initially majored in French, but she changed to Science after trying unsuccessfully to arrange to study abroad. Her college did not have an Astronomy department, so instead she majored in Physics. While pursuing her undergraduate degree, she undertook a student internship with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey from 2000 to 2002.[2][3] She graduated with a Bachelor of Science with High Honors in Physics from the University of Cincinnati in 2002.[4]

Bauer immediately started her master's degree in Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. This was where she started her involvement with the area that would become the major focus of her research career: galaxy assembly and evolution.[4] She graduated as a Master of Science in 2004 and began studying for a PhD in Astrophysics, still at the University of Texas at Austin. This included working as a Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany in 2006, and at the Gemini Observatory in Chile in 2007.[5] She was awarded her PhD in 2008, with her thesis entitled Star-Forming Galaxies Growing Up Over the Last Ten Billion Years.[2]

Research career

After completing her PhD, Bauer accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Nottingham in England (September 2008 - November 2010).[5] When that finished, she moved to Australia to take up a three-year ARC "Super Science Fellowship", working at the AAO.

File:Galaxy Cluster Abell 2261.jpg
A galaxy's position within a cluster such as this (Abell 2261) affects how it can form new stars.

At the conclusion of that fellowship in November 2013, Bauer took up the role of Research Astronomer at the AAO.[6] Her area of research investigates the processes by which galaxies form, and particularly why they eventually stop creating new stars.[7] In order to explore how galaxies build into the diverse structures we see today, she analyzes systematic surveys of hundreds of thousands of galaxies, looking for clues that indicate what physical processes regulate the rates at which new stars are formed in galaxies which are subjected to different conditions.[8]

In 2012, she published her findings from a study into the evolution of stars within galaxies which themselves are members of galaxy clusters, using the Gemini North Observatory in Hawaii. The research found that a galaxy's position within the galactic cluster affected stellar evolution within that galaxy: the closer a galaxy is to the center of a cluster, the sooner it stops forming new stars. The interpretation of this is that near the centre of the cluster, the large number of close galactic neighbours influence each other through gravitation to produce a sea of hot gas, and that hot gas seems to be the limiting factor that constrains new star formation.[9] Mergers of galaxies also play a part: her forecasts of how our own Milky Way galaxy will merge with the Andromeda Galaxy and the two smaller Magellanic Cloud galaxies in several billion years have prompted further new studies into how that will affect the rates of star formation locally.[10]

As of February 2015, Cornell University's arXiv service lists 61 publications of her astronomical research in peer-reviewed journals, mostly in the categories of either Astrophysics of Galaxies or Cosmology.[11] She has presented her findings at international professional conferences and institutions, including the Annual Science Meeting of the Astronomical Society of Australia in July 2011, Adler Planetarium, Chicago, in September 2013 and the AusGO (Australian Gemini Office) Observational Techniques Workshop in April 2014.[12]

Public outreach

File:Aust Skeptic Con 2014 Bauer1.JPG
Amanda Bauer giving a public presentation in November 2014.
Amanda Bauer (on ukulele) and Fred Watson (on guitar) provide a musical interlude at the 2014 celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the AAT.

Bauer started her involvement with organized public outreach in a project called Sixty Symbols of Physics and Astronomy during her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Nottingham in England. She contributed regular interviews to this series from 2009 to 2011.[5][13] After leaving Nottingham, she continued her outreach activities informally with her "Astropixie" blog.

In 2013 while she was working at the AAO, in addition to her research role, Bauer became the first official Outreach Officer for the AAO. The objective of this role is "to develop strategies to capture and communicate the excitement of new astronomical discoveries and innovative engineering feats occurring within the AAO and the astronomical community."[8] She manages the AAO's online presence, especially social media using its Facebook, Twitter (@AAOastro) and YouTube channel, and the AAO's growing collection of online videos for the public.[14] She also works with more conventional media by acting as the AAO's media contact and issuing press releases, edits the AAO Observer newsletter,[15] gives public talks, writes science articles for several publications, visits schools, talks to members of parliament,[16] and curated a public photographic exhibition.[17] The importance of her outreach role became particularly apparent in January 2013 when bush-fires threatened the astronomical installations on top of Siding Spring mountain: Bauer was the media contact ensuring that the latest information was available.[18]

Bauer is a regular guest on ABC Radio and ABC News television, a guest writer for Australian Sky & Telescope magazine, guest writer and astronomy contact for Cosmos magazine, featured astrophysicist in video series Deep Sky Videos[19] and Sixty Symbols of Physics and Astronomy.[13] Her live presentations have been in front of the public, astronomical organizations and school groups, with audiences up to 350 people at the Australian Skeptics National Convention in November 2014.[20] She teaches the "Scientists in Schools" program for 8- to 12-year-old students, and "CAASTRO in the Classroom" astronomy lessons to about 100 students.[21] In her spare time, she also maintains her own "astropixie" blog and Twitter feed about astronomy.[4]

She also takes an active role in helping other astronomers to develop their own skills in science communication, by conducting workshops and giving talks to professionals, including the ASA Harley Wood School in July 2014, the AAO Colloquium on Outreach in March 2014, and "dotAstronomy: Networked Astronomy and New Media" in Boston in September 2013.[22] She is the Director of "dotAstronomy 7" which will be held in Sydney in November 2015.[23]

In 2014 the Astronomical Society of Australia acknowledged her contributions to public outreach by electing her to the Steering Committee of its Education and Public Outreach Chapter (EPOC) for a two-year term.[24]

Personal life

Bauer enjoys live acoustic music, camping, hiking, and swimming. She says that "the best of all worlds is when she goes camping at music festivals, enjoying the companionship, the great music, the campfires, and sleeping under the stars."[4][25]

In February 2016, she gave birth to a daughter, Ida Luna.[26]

Selected publications

  • Co-chaired the Australian Astronomy Decadal Plan Working Group 3.2 on Education, Outreach, and Careers.[27]
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Awards and recognition

  • 2016: Featured in the STEM Career Profile in the inaugural issue of Science News.[28]
  • 2015: Winner (one of five) in the Top 5 under 40 competition conducted by the UNSW and ABC Radio National "to discover Australia’s new generation of passionate science communicators"[29]
  • 2014 - 2016: Steering Committee member of the Astronomical Society of Australia's Education and Public Outreach Chapter (EPOC)[24]
  • 2010-2013: ARC Super Science Fellowship at the AAO[30]
  • 2013: Nominated for Dept of Industry Excellence in Innovation Award
  • Committee member of the Astronomical Society of Australia[31]
  • 2012: National finalist in the Fresh Science Media competition[9]
  • 2012: Represented the Astronomical Society of Australia at "Science Meets Parliament"[16]
  • 2009: Strategic Grant Award from the British Science Association
  • 2006, 2007: NASA/Texas Space Grant Consortium Graduate Fellowship

References

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  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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