Suzanne Mary Imber (born May 1983) is a British planetary scientist specialising in

space weather Space weather is a branch of space physics and aeronomy, or heliophysics, concerned with the time varying conditions within the Solar System, including the solar wind, emphasizing the space surrounding the Earth, including conditions in the ...

at the

University of Leicester , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_lab ...

. She was the winner of the 2017 BBC Two television programme ''Astronauts, Do You Have What It Takes?''.Bio at the University of Leicester
/ref>Conversation with Imber
– ''Love and Science'' podcast for BCfm, 2 October 2017

Education

Imber was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire and attended

Berkhamsted School Berkhamsted School is an independent day school in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England. The present school was formed in 1997 by the amalgamation of the original Berkhamsted School, founded in 1541 by John Incent, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral ...

in Hertfordshire. One highlight of her school years was winning the

Lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensiv ...

National Championships in 2000. She studied a 4-year physics degree at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

, from where she graduated with a first class honours in 2005. She captained the University of London Lacrosse team and went on to play for the England under-21s. She undertook two internships at NASA during her time at Imperial, working in the Heliophysics Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, which steered her in the direction of planetary science. She completed her PhD thesis in 2008 on the ''Auroral and Ionospheric Flow Measurements of Magnetopause Reconnection during Intervals of Northward Interplanetary Magnetic Field'', at the

Research and public engagement

Imber joined the Goddard Space Flight Center in

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

in 2008 as a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

research scientist. Here she studied '

', contributing to the understanding of how energy and momentum from the solar wind influence the environments of the Earth and Mercury, using data from NASA and ESA spacecraft combined with ground-based observations. Her supervisor and mentor was Professor Jim Slavin, who was involved with the MESSENGER mission to Mercury. In 2011 she returned to the

as a

postdoctoral A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

research associate Research associates are researchers (scholars and professionals) that usually have an advanced degree beyond a Master's degree. In some universities/research institutes, such as Harvard/Harvard Medical School/Harvard School of Public Health, th ...

. In 2014 she was awarded a

Leverhulme Trust The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1925 under the will of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), with the instruction that its resources should be used to suppo ...

Fellowship, "Rough Winds do Shake the Magnetosphere of Mercury". Imber is a visiting professor at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, as well as the only UK member of NASA's MESSENGER Science Team, in recognition of her work studying Mercury's magnetosphere. She is a co-investigator on the Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (MIXS), an instrument designed and built at the University of Leicester, currently on board the European Space Agency's Mercury mission,

BepiColombo BepiColombo is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to the planet Mercury. The mission comprises two satellites launched together: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and ''Mio'' ...

, which launched on 19 October 2018. This instrument is designed to determine the composition of the surface of Mercury in unprecedented detail, aimed at resolving key questions about Mercury's formation and evolution, and will also measure Mercury's X-ray aurora, a phenomenon recently discovered by Imber's research team studying the magnetosphere of Mercury. In 2017 Imber was selected for the BBC Two's ''Astronauts, Do You Have What It Takes?''. She endured several challenges, including speaking Russian in a centrifuge after enduring 4.5g, taking part in emergency procedures in an undersea training facility and taking her own blood. She won the competition and received a recommendation from Chris Hadfield to join the European Space Agency. Since winning, Imber has launched a public engagement programme in her spare time, personally speaking with over 35,000 school children at hundreds of schools across the country, and giving over 60 public lectures in the course of 12 months. Her goal is to raise the aspirations of young people and share her journey and her enthusiasm for her career as a space scientist.

Awards and honours

In 2019, Imber gave the

Claudia Parsons Claudia Sydney Maia Parsons (15 August 1900 – 5 June 1998) was a British engineer, writer and traveller. One of the first three women to graduate as engineers in England, she also wrote several books and was the first woman to circumnavigate th ...

Memorial Lecture at Loughborough University. In the same year, she was elected to the new post of Pro-Vice Chancellor (Students) at Leicester University. She was awarded the

Rosalind Franklin Award The Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award was established in 2003 and is awarded annually by the Royal Society to an individual for outstanding work in any field of Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to support the promo ...

by the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 2021 for her "achievements in the field of planetary science and her well-considered project proposal with a potential for a high impact". She was the winner of the 2017 BBC Two television programme Astronauts, Do You Have What It Takes?.

Personal life

Imber is a high-altitude mountaineer who has climbed peaks in Alaska, the Himalayas and the Andes, working since 2014 with British explorer Maximo Kausch.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Imber, Suzanne 1983 births Living people Alumni of the University of Leicester British astrophysicists British women physicists Women astrophysicists Women space scientists Space scientists Planetary scientists Women planetary scientists