Lisa Kewley facts for kids

Lisa Jennifer Kewley (born in 1974) is an Australian astrophysicist. She studies how galaxies change and grow over time. Currently, she is the Director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

Before this, Dr. Kewley was a professor at the Australian National University. She also directed a research center called ASTRO 3-D. She has won many important awards for her work, including the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 2005 and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 2008. In 2022, she became the first female director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

Life and Education

Lisa Kewley grew up in South Australia. Her parents encouraged her to explore science. A high school physics teacher and a stargazing camp helped her become interested in astronomy.

After high school, she studied at the University of Adelaide. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in astrophysics. Later, she moved to Canberra to get her doctorate (PhD) in astrophysics from the Australian National University in 2002. In 2001, she spent some time as a visiting student at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

Early Research

While at Johns Hopkins, she helped write an important paper for The Astrophysical Journal. This paper was about "Theoretical Modeling of Starburst Galaxies". These are galaxies that are forming stars very quickly.

Career and Discoveries

After finishing her PhD, Dr. Kewley moved to the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Massachusetts. There, she worked on how stars form and change. In 2004, she received a special fellowship called the Hubble postdoctoral fellowship.

Studying Distant Galaxies

In 2005, she continued her research at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi. Dr. Kewley was part of a team that used images from the Hubble Space Telescope. They found a very distant galaxy, about 9.3 billion light-years away.

She then worked with the W. M. Keck Observatory to study this galaxy and others. She analyzed the amount of oxygen in these galaxies. This research helped scientists understand how galaxies change as they get older. For this important work, she received the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 2005.

Awards and Recognition

In 2008, Dr. Kewley won the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy from the American Astronomical Society. This award was for her research showing how a galaxy's features depend on its age. She studied how old and new galaxies differ in their oxygen levels, how fast they form stars, and what their centers are like.

In 2011, Dr. Kewley returned to Australia. She became a professor at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University. In 2014, she was chosen as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2020, she became a fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales.

Dr. Kewley also created and now directs the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in All Sky Astrophysics. This center is based at Mount Stromlo.

Personal Life

Lisa Kewley married her husband, Reuben, in Canberra in 2001. They have a son, born in 2008, and a daughter, born in 2011. Both of her children were born while she was living and working in Hawai'i.

See also

In Spanish: Lisa Kewley para niños