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Sarafina Nance
American science communicator, astrophysics researcher From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Sarafina El-Badry Nance is an Egyptian-American[2] astrophysicist[3][4][5] and science communicator in the Department of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley.[6][7] Her research investigates supernovae and their applications to cosmology. Nance is known for her use of social media, in particular Twitter,[8] Instagram[9] and LinkedIn[5] where she discusses astrophysics and activism. She is also an advocate for women's health and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Her memoir Starstruck was published in 2023.[10][11]
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Early life and education
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Nance grew up in Austin, Texas.[6] She became interested in the Solar System as a child, and used to listen to StarDate on the radio on her way home from school.[12] She has said that her St. Stephen's Episcopal School's high school physics teacher, Frank Mikan, encouraged her love of space science.[12]
In 2016, Nance received a dual Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016.[13] Her undergraduate honors thesis was on A Theoretical Investigation of Supernovae Progenitors and advised by J. Craig Wheeler.[13] There she used asteroseismology to understand stars that were about to undergo a supernova.[6] Her research focussed on Betelgeuse.[14][15][12] While an undergraduate student at Austin, Nance was named a Dean's Honour scholarship and took part in a National Science Foundation (NSF) summer program at Harvard University.[12]
In 2017, Nance moved to the University of California, Berkeley for her graduate studies, where she investigates supernovae and uses them as a means to study both the make-up and ultimate fate of the universe. Here she earned an Master of Science (MS) degree in astronomy, before beginning a doctoral programme.[12] In particular, Nance studies the evolutionary state of Betelgeuse.[16] She works with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Centre for Computational Cosmology to use supercomputers to build models of the explosions of supernovae in their final stages.[17][18][19]
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Career and research
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In March 2021, Nance was listed by Forbes magazine as one of 30 inspirational women as part of Women's History Month.[17]
Science communication
During the first year of her undergraduate degree Nance worked as an intern at the McDonald Observatory.[12] After starting her doctoral degree, Nance took to her science communication online.[16] One of her viral tweets on Twitter, which highlighted how important failure was in science, was picked up by Sundar Pichai.[20]
Nance is an activist for women's health. In her early 20s it was identified that she had inherited the BRCA2 gene from her father, which is known to be a predictor of breast cancer.[21] Nance used a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to cover the cost of a double mastectomy, and her social media platform to advocate for early and frequent testing as well as preventive medicine.[22][23][24] After searching for the best local surgeons, Nance identified Anne Peled, a Californian reconstructive surgeon who was also a survivor of breast cancer.[21] Nance underwent the surgery in 2019.[21]
On January 15, 2021, Seeker released the internet television astronomy series Constellations, hosted by Nance.[7][25]
Nance's memoir Starstruck was published in 2023.[10] which explains various aspects of astronomy alongside telling her experiences growing up and entering a career in astronomy.[2]
Selected publications
According to Google Scholar[3] and Scopus,[4] her most cited publications include:
Scholia has an author profile for Sarafina Nance.
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References
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