معرفی
Vicky Scowcroft is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics at the University of Bath, where she is affiliated with The Bath Physics Observatory (BPO) and specializes in Astrophysics. Her office is located in room 8 WEST 4.03, and she can be reached at V.Scowcroft@bath.ac.uk or by phone at +44 (0) 1225 383132.
Dr. Scowcroft earned her MPhys from the University of Leeds in 2006 and her PhD from Liverpool John Moores University in 2010. She then served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate and subsequently as a Senior Research Associate at The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, CA, from 2009 to 2016. In 2016, she joined the University of Bath as a Prize Fellow.
Her research focuses on variable stars, which she uses to probe the structure and evolution of nearby galaxies and the Universe as a whole. By studying different populations of variable stars, she investigates the 3D and chemical structure of galaxies, examining their evolution over time and interactions with each other. She also researches the expansion rate of the Universe using variable stars to better understand its composition and evolution. Her research fingerprint shows strong expertise in RR Lyrae Variable Stars (100%), Metallicity (64%), Red Giant Branch (60%), and other related areas in stellar astrophysics and galactic structure.
Dr. Scowcroft's recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on Cepheid variables, RR Lyrae stars, and their applications in measuring cosmic distances and mapping galactic structure. Her work often utilizes infrared observations and data from space telescopes like Hubble. She has made significant contributions to understanding the Magellanic Clouds and calibrating the period-luminosity relation for various types of variable stars.
- Prize Fellow at University of Bath (2016)
Dr. Scowcroft is actively involved in several research projects, including 'IRAM - Confirming cyclical variability of CO in Cepheids' (as CoPI) and multiple phases of development for The Bath Physics Observatory. She has supervised at least one student and has contributed to creating educational resources for undergraduate astronomy education, including a case study on developing affordable observatories for teaching purposes. She has also created valuable astronomical datasets including the 'VizieR Online Data Catalog: Spitzer/IRAC observations of SMC Cepheids' (2016) and the 'Dataset for 'The mid-infrared Leavitt Law for Classical Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds'' (2020).
