News release: Ilona wins Marie Curie post at La Palma

Abstract

Ilona Soechting, a final-year PhD student in the Centre for Astrophysics, University of Central Lancashire, has won the 2002/3 Marie Curie postdoctoral Fellowship at the international La Palma Observatory (ORM, Canary Islands). She takes up her post-doctoral position there in October.

Ilona obtained a First Class Honours MPhys degree in Astrophysics at the University in 1999. She then won one of the University's own PhD Bursary awards, to support her during her three-year full-time PhD study programme in Observational Cosmology.

Ilona and her colleagues have made important breakthroughs in identifying clusters of galaxies and hence the physical association of these with 'quasars', which are among the most extreme and remarkable objects in the universe. Recently, she presented a paper on quasars at the general meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Albuquerque, the results of which were selected for an AAS press release. She also gave seminars and talks in Tucson and New Mexico. Her PhD programme was supervised at Central Lancashire by cosmologist Dr Roger Clowes.