'Star' Queen’s researcher awarded €1.2m funding

A leading Queen’s University researcher has won a prestigious European award to further his world-leading astronomy research.

Dr Stephen Smartt has been awarded over €1.2 million through his European Young Investigator (EURYI) award to develop a research team to engage full-time with key research in his scientific field.

This will include looking at the death of stars, gaining a better understanding of supernovae - the explosions that signal the end of a stars life, creating the heavier elements (such as oxygen and iron) and dispersing them through space.

Commenting on his award, which is virtually the financial equivalent to a Nobel prize, Dr Smartt said: "In this project, I aim to find twenty to thirty progenitors of supernovae, so that we can study how massive they are and what type of explosion they produce.

“We believe that the diversity seen in supernovae explosions is due to the destruction of different star types, but at the moment we don't have the evidence to back this up."

The EURYI Awards are given to 25 researchers from around the globe to create world-class research teams in Europe.

Winners are selected on the basis of their academic and research excellence and their future potential.

(MB/SP)