UA Physics Alumna Sera Markoff Appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy at University of Cambridge

Congratulations to Prof. Sera Markoff, who has recently been appointed the highly coveted Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. It is one of the oldest named professorships in the world founded in 1704.  

 

Prof. Markoff got her PhD in physics with Prof. Melia in 2000 at U of A physics department. The late 1990's and early 2000's was a halcyon period for theoretical astrophysics research in Professor Fulvio Melia's group. This was the time when the theoretical groundwork was laid for the eventual imaging of black hole horizons that eventually gave birth to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which has now successfully imaged the supermassive black hole at the Galactic center and in the nucleus of another giant active galaxy known as M87. Several of the graduate students who worked on this project then went on to notable achievements, including Siming Liu, who won the highly prestigious Trumpler award for the most significant PhD thesis in Astrophysics 2005, now Head of the particle astrophysics group at Southwest Jiaotong University in China, and Sera Markoff, who has just been appointed to the Plumian professor of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. Both have become world leaders in their field, Sera most notably as a founding member of the EHT, based on the work she carried out at the University of Arizona that launched her career in black hole physics.

 

You can read more about Prof. Markoff here.