Congratulations to Dr Becky Smethurst who has been awarded the 2022 Royal Astronomical Society Research Fellowship. 

The purpose of the RAS Research Fellowships is to enable outstanding candidates to pursue research in the UK in the disciplines advanced by the RAS, such as astronomy, solar system science, geophysics and closely related branches of these sciences.

Dr Smethurst is a Junior Research Fellow at the House. Her research accomplishments include applying state-of-the-art statistical tools to dissect the evolutionary paths of galaxies in the Universe, using large datasets such as Galaxy Zoo and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. As well as communicating astrophysics and astronomy to the public via her YouTube channel, she also co-hosts the Supermassive Podcast along with science journalist Izzie Clarke.

Dr Smethurst plans to use the fellowship to continue her work on understanding supermassive black holes. She said, “I’m absolutely thrilled to be awarded the RAS fellowship so I can continue my work studying merger-free growth of supermassive black holes. My recent work has shown that unlike previously thought, the majority of supermassive black holes grow due to processes internal to a galaxy, but we still don’t understand how that happens yet! So I’m ready and raring to get stuck in and find out how during my tenure with the RAS fellowship."

Dr Smethurst's website can be found here.