Lucia Marchetti

SARCHI POSTDOC 

Email: marchetti.lu at gmail.com

Lucia Marchetti

Since 2017 I hold a joint SARChi post-doctoral research fellowship in Astronomy at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and at University of the Western Cape (UWC). I obtained a a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Padua, Italy, in 2012 where I specialized in extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology. After the PhD I moved to the UK where I worked as Post-doctoral Researcher at the Open University for 4 years before moving to Cape Town to my current position. My research focuses on extragalactic astronomy, exploiting space and ground based observations towards the multi-wavelength identification, physical characterisation and statistical studies of star-forming galaxies and gravitational lensing systems. I am an active researcher as well as a passionate science communicator, a fellow of the UK Royal Astronomical Society and a member of the International Astronomical Union. I am involved in projects using telescope in space and on the ground such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Herschel Space Observatory, the South African Large Telescope (SALT), the Spitzer Space Telescope and (in the future) the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), Euclid and the JWST. In 2016 I have been awarded of the DST-NRF Fellowship for Early Career Researchers from the UK to visit the South African Astronomical Observatory to work on the South African Large Telescope Gravitational Lensing Project. I have served as one of the UK National coordinators of the International Year of Light (IYL2015 – light2015.org). I am now coordinating the Soapbox Science project in SA (http://soapboxscience.org/cape-town-local-organising-team) and I am one of the scientific advisors for the “Hemelliggaam – or the attempt to be here now” project (https://www.hemelliggaam.com). In 2017 I have also completed a Master in Science Communication organized by the CREST Institute at Stellenbosch University.

Publications