Professor Carole Mundell

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Celebrating Professor Carole Mundell

Our second Honorary Doctor this week from the University of Glasgow is Professor Carole Mundell, Director of Science at the European Space Agency.

In its 575th anniversary year, Glasgow honoured Carole with an Honorary Doctor of Science at its summer graduations, a homecoming for one of its own graduates.

A Glasgow start Carole graduated from the University of Glasgow with a double first-class honours degree in natural philosophy and astronomy. She completed her PhD in astrophysics at the University of Manchester, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Jodrell Bank Observatory and the University of Maryland.

Exploring the universe Carole returned to the UK in 1999 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow at Liverpool John Moores University, becoming a full professor in 2007. There she founded the Liverpool Gamma-Ray Burst research group and pioneered robotic telescope technology to follow up high-energy events discovered by satellites, in real time. She later held the Hiroko Sherwin Chair in Extragalactic Astronomy at the University of Bath. Her research on supermassive black holes and galaxy evolution runs to more than 170 peer-reviewed papers.

Science and diplomacy In 2018 Carole became the first woman Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and later the first Chief International Science Envoy. She was elected President of the UK Science Council in 2021. On 1 March 2023 she became ESA's Director of Science and Head of the European Space Astronomy Centre near Madrid.

Why this matters Carole's honour from Glasgow celebrates a scientist who began her journey in the University's physics and astronomy classes, and who now leads Europe's space science programme.