Katie Auchettl - OzGrav Affiliate from the University of Melbourne

If you had told me as a kid that I could work with people from all around the world, using telescopes located in some of the most amazing locations on Earth--and even more amazingly, in space--to understand the most extreme events in the Universe, I’m not sure I would have believed you. In fact, it wasn’t until the end of the first six months of my PhD at Monash University that I focused on studying the nature of extreme astrophysical phenomena that we all know and love in OzGrav (originally I focused on indirect detection of dark matter).
 
With the support of my PhD advisors, this decision to change fields mid-PhD provided me with the unique opportunity to work directly with experts in high-energy astrophysics at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. After graduating from my PhD in 2015, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (CCAPP), at the Ohio State University, and an Assistant Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, at the University of Copenhagen (KU). In 2019, I also became an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).
 
My time at CCAPP, KU and UCSC was incredibly rich and rewarding. With the support and opportunities provided to me during my time at these institutes, I was able to significantly broaden and expand my research. Now, I focus on multi-wavelength and time-domain observations to better understand the physical processes and observational signatures related to the extreme death of stars and their compact objects.
 
In 2020, I joined the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne as a Senior Lecturer, ASTRO-3D fellow and OzGrav Affiliate. Although my start back in Melbourne was delayed by Covid-19, I have been warmly welcomed by everyone in OzGrav. I’m looking forward to learning from and connecting with Centre members, as well as supporting them with their goals; I want to provide the same supportive and welcoming environment that I experienced during my career at OzGrav (and ASTRO-3D) so far. So, please feel free to reach out at any time, as I would love to hear from you!

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