Sarah Hughes
Sarah is a postdoctoral researcher working to support research and observations with the Magellan telescope. Her background is in ground-based instrumentation, specifically working with multi-object spectrographs.
Sarah was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge where she worked within the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) in a data science capacity, specialising in pipeline development for ground-based instrumentation. Sarah has significant experience in Python alongside SQL, Git, and JIRA, having used these languages and tools in Agile development environments.
Sarah successfully defended her DPhil thesis in June 2023, which was supervised by Prof. Gavin Dalton. The thesis was on the metrology, calibration, and commissioning of the new pick-and-place multi-object spectrograph called WEAVE. WEAVE was installed on the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope and the first light was achieved in October 2022.
Prior to that, in June 2019, Sarah graduated with an MSci in Astrophysics from Royal Holloway, University of London (First Class Honours). Sarah has previous experience as an Outreach Ambassador and enjoys mentoring students as they complete their academic journey.