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 m ...

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_la ...

. She was the winner of the 2017

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream ...

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 Cathedra ...

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 extensi ...

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 ...

, 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 The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...

, which steered her in the direction of planetary science. She completed her

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper ''Piled Higher and Deeper'' (also known as ''PhD Comics''), is a newsp ...

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 The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC emp ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), 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; ...

in 2008 as a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

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 ''MESSENGER'' was a NASA robotic space probe that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015, studying Mercury's chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field. The name is a backronym for "Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geoch ...

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 The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the n ...

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 , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...

'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 In astronomy and planetary science, a magnetosphere is a region of space surrounding an astronomical object in which charged particles are affected by that object's magnetic field. It is created by a celestial body with an active interior dynamo ...

of Mercury. In 2017 Imber was selected for the

'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 Chris Austin Hadfield (born August 29, 1959) is a Canadian retired astronaut, engineer, fighter pilot, and musician. The first Canadian to perform extravehicular activity in outer space, he has flown two Space Shuttle missions and also ser ...

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 Loughborough University (abbreviated as ''Lough'' or ''Lboro'' for post-nominals) is a public research university in the market town of Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. It has been a university since 1966, but it dates back to 1909, whe ...

. 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, r ...

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 Maximo Kausch (born March 1981 in Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-la ...

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