The winner of the 2023 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship is Dr Marie Van de Sande!
Dr Van de Sande is an astrochemist. She presently holds a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at Leeds, and in September 2023 will move to become an Oort Fellow at Leiden Observatory. She has a real flair for understanding the complexities of data from many different sources and for presenting the results with clarity.
She is already a leader in her area of research. Her commitment to and enthusiasm for the field of astrochemistry shone through her application on an unusual, interdisciplinary topic, that of astrochemistry and stellar end stages. Dr Van de Sande has an exceptionally strong CV. She has many publications to her name and has given a number of keynote lectures at high-profile conferences in her field. She also has an excellent record of outreach and service to the community, having given several presentations to the public both in the UK and Belgium. Her lecture topic on this key aspect of stellar evolution will be: “Dying stars seeding the Universe”.
The Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship was established in 2018 by what is now the Herschel Society, in association with the Royal Astronomical Society, to celebrate Caroline’s memory by supporting promising women astronomers early in their careers. Caroline, William’s younger sister, started out as his assistant, but in time became recognised as an important astronomer in her own right, was the first to be paid as such, and was awarded the RAS Gold Medal in 1828. The Caroline Herschel Prize Lecture is hosted by University of Bath in November in cooperation with the Society as part of the University’s public lecture series.