Dept News
Dr Rebecca Nealon awarded ARC Future Fellowship at Monash University
Congratulations to Dr Rebecca Nealon (previously Astronomy and Astrophysics Group) who has recently relocated to Monash University, Melbourne and has been awarded an ARC Future Fellowship.
Dr Nealon's project titled 'Solving the mysteries of warped discs to reveal how planets are born in evolving star systems' will delve into the origins of planet formation in warped discs. Planets are born in dusty, swirling gas discs called protoplanetary discs. However, the process by which these planets are created is still poorly understood and recent observations of discs show interesting geometries like warps. Dr Nealon's project will use these warps to explain how and when planets are born.
Image shows: Example simulations of planet-disc interactions, showing how the planet changes the disc structure. The left and right panels show different numerical resolutions, with the rightmost panel being quite well resolved. Dr Nealon's novel numerical implementation (shown in the middle panel) allows this calculation to run at least twice as fast as before with the comparable accuracy.
As Dr Nealon's new project evolves, she will continue to work alongside colleagues in the Warwick Astronomy and Astrophysics Group where her research in this area started as a Stephen Hawking Fellow.
Dr Nealon says "I see this project as a strong continuation of work I started at Warwick and want to keep working with people there. I'm also excited to extend my outreach project Coding with Sophie that I developed at Warwick to international audiences."