Emily Levesque

About the guest: Emily Levesque is an astronomy professor at the University of Washington, where she leads a long-term stellar astrophysics research program studying massive stars. Her group is also working on a data sonification project called TransientZoo that allows participants, including people who are visually impaired, to classify lightcurves via sound. 
Emily teaches astronomy and scientific writing at UW, has released a Great Courses lecture class on “Great Heroes and Discovery of Astronomy”, co-authored a textbook on stellar evolution, and wrote the first book of its kind on red supergiant stars. As a physics undergraduate at MIT, Emily discovered the three largest stars in the universe. She has an astronomy PhD from the University of Hawaii and led the discovery of a completely new type of star in 2014. Research by Emily and collaborators inspired changes in graduate astronomy school admissions policies which should reduce barriers for women and students of colour.

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Rhiannon: Thank you, Emily, for taking the time to answer some questions for our members today. We received a lot of them, so we’re just going to dive in. The first question a lot of people asked was what sparked your interest in astronomy?