Ragnhild Lunnan

Ragnhild Lunnan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University since April 2021. She leads the supernova research group which is funded by an ERC starting grant called TransPIre starting in 2023. She is also a member of the Young Academy of Sweden for the period 2024-2029.

Dr. Lunnan earned her PhD from Harvard University in 2015 under the supervision of Prof. Edo Berger, focusing on the properties and environments of superluminous supernovae from the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey. Prior to her current position, she held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at Stockholm University and the Oskar Klein Centre, and was a postdoctoral scholar working with Prof. Claes Fransson and the Zwicky Transient Facility group. This position was joint with the Caltech Astronomy department where she worked from September 2015 to March 2017 with Prof. Mansi Kasliwal. She completed her undergraduate studies at Princeton University in Astrophysical Sciences with a certificate in Applied and Computational Mathematics as a Davis United World College Scholar.

Her research focuses on unusual transients, particularly superluminous supernovae, which are 10-100 times brighter than ordinary core-collapse and Type Ia supernovae. She investigates what these extreme events reveal about massive star evolution and star formation in extreme environments. Her work explores possible mechanisms powering these luminous events, including magnetar spin-down, pair-instability explosions, and interaction with circumstellar material. She is an observational astronomer who utilizes data from multiple ground-based telescopes (VLT, Magellan, MMT, Gemini, Keck) and space-based observatories (Hubble, Spitzer, Swift).

Analysis of her publication record reveals a strong focus on characterizing the diversity of superluminous supernovae through detailed light curve and spectral analysis. Her work with the Zwicky Transient Facility has been particularly productive, leading to discoveries about eruptive mass loss before explosion, host galaxy environments, and the physics behind light curve undulations. She has also made significant contributions to understanding calcium-rich gap transients and has earlier work in near-field cosmology.

• ERC starting grant TransPIre (2023)
• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship
• Davis United World College Scholar

Dr. Lunnan currently teaches the undergraduate Cosmology course (AS5003) at Stockholm University and actively mentors students working on supernovae research projects. She supervises the supernova research group which utilizes data from the Zwicky Transient Facility to discover and characterize rare cosmic explosions. Her group is particularly focused on understanding the progenitor systems of superluminous supernovae through detailed observations of their properties, environments, and evolution.