ISOBEL ROMERO-SHAW
Herchel Smith Research Fellow, University of Cambridge
British, living in the UK
Isobel studied gravitational-wave astrophysics for her PhD at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, before moving back to the UK as a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. She studies the tiny ripples in space-time caused by black holes and neutron stars smashing into each other, and tries to work out how pairs of these objects meet each other in the vastness of space. Isobel is passionate about her research, but also about how it fits into the history of astrophysics as a whole – we have gone from gazing at only the stars we could see with our naked eyes, to crafting giant antenna to sense distant objects that aren’t visible with light at all!
In her spare time Isobel loves to read, explore, and get creative. She wrote a book about the history of words used to talk about the solar system: Planetymology: Why Uranus is not called George, and other facts about space and words. She also co-authored and illustrated a colouring book about Women in Physics with fellow HB6 member Debater Chattopadhyay.
