Dr Suzie Imber is an Associate Professor of Planetary Science at the University of Leicester. She specialises in studying space weather; understanding the impact of the solar wind on the magnetised planets, in particular the Earth and Mercury. Suzie is a Co-Investigator on the X-ray spectrometer on board the joint ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft launching in October 2018 and arriving at Mercury in 2025.
She is also a high altitude mountaineer and explorer, and the winner of the BBC2 series Astronauts: Do You Have What it Takes? In this talk she will discuss her journey into becoming a scientist, and the challenge of juggling her career with training as an elite athlete. In 2016 she used the University supercomputer to discover many unclimbed mountains in the Andes, and every year sets off to scale more of these peaks, sometimes even finding Incan ruins on the summits! Suzie is a co-investigator on one of the instruments heading to Mercury on board the BepiColombo spacecraft, launching in October, so she will talk a little about the instrument, the mission, and the unanswered questions surrounding Mercury’s composition, evolution and magnetic field. Finally Suzie will present some of the challenges she faced as part of the BBC Astronauts series, and where the journey has taken her since the show.
Free tickets available via Eventbrite - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/free-evening-public-lecture-tickets-49733252497