People

Laura Scott

Background

I grew up near Derby in the UK. I did an 4-year MSci in Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Birmingham, before going on to complete a PhD at Keele University supervised by Prof Raphael Hirschi. During my PhD, I investigated how mixing at the boundary between convective and radiative regions inside massive stars affects their evolution. I did this by inputing the results of hydrodynamic simulations of convection into stellar evolution models. After my PhD, I moved to Armagh Observatory for a postdoc to work with Prof Simon Jeffery. My research in Armagh was focussed on the spectroscopic and evolutionary analysis of hot subdwarf stars, particularly the heavy metal subdwarfs. These stars have strong absorption lines from elements such as lead and zirconium in their spectra. I worked on modelling these stars' atmospheres using chemical stratification and diffusion to reproduce their spectra.

Postdoc research topic

For my postdoc research as part of the SYMPHONY project, I am involved in WPs 1 and 3. I use space photometry to extract the pulsation frequencies of massive stars and perform forward asteroseismic modelling to constrain their interior rotation and mixing profiles.