UK fellowship awarded to expand LOFAR research

Dr Leah Morabito, an Assistant Professor at Durham University in the UK, has been awarded a prestigious UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowship to continue her research into galaxy evolution, one of the science drivers for the SKA.

Originally from the United States, Dr Morabito began her career in the US Air Force before moving to Leiden University in the Netherlands to complete her PhD and subsequently becoming a Hintze Fellow at the University of Oxford in the UK. She is a member of the UK SKA Science Committee, which acts as a liaison between the SKA Organisation and the wider UK science community, through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

During her career, Dr Morabito has developed specialised data processing techniques for the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) to achieve the highest resolution images at low frequencies, which are crucial in investigating active supermassive black holes in distant galaxies. Dr Morabito’s Future Leaders Fellowship secures an immediate leadership role for her in fully enabling and exploiting SKA pathfinder LOFAR’s transformational imaging resolution in grand-scale low-frequency sky surveys, that will remain unrivalled for the foreseeable future. Zooming in on the radio emission from tens of thousands of galaxies will provide an unprecedented opportunity to measure the influence of supermassive black hole activity at the centre of these galaxies on the growth of stars, paving the way for future surveys with the SKA.

”I’m really excited because this fellowship will allow me to build a diverse team to unlock the secrets of supermassive black holes and how important they are in galaxy evolution. We’ll use an SKA pathfinder to develop techniques and talent for the future,” Dr Morabito says.

By Hilary Kay (The University of Manchester - UK SKA)

Dr Leah Morabito, Durham University

Credit: Leah Morabito, Durham University