In Celebration of International Women’s Day on Thursday, our girls joined by Bedford Free School and Castle Newnham School enjoyed an inspiring STEM talk from Heidi Thiemann, who is currently undertaking a PhD at the Open University. Her research involves understanding the relationship between the rotation period of a star and its X-ray emission, known as the rotation-activity relation.

Heidi gave a colourful and interactive presentation about her day-to-day research into stars, which involves collecting vast amounts data from telescopes and programming. Her research mainly focuses on the intrinsic brightness of stars, which investigates how bright a star would be without the effects of distance or absorption. All the students took part in an interactive quiz and had the chance to answer many questions about the solar system.

Heidi explains what inspired her to work in a STEM field: “My career in Physics is inspired by a family friend who introduced me to astronomy when I was only 11 years old. He showed me astronomy software, and I remember being fascinated that it was possible to track satellites across the night sky, and I would stand outside watching for satellites and stars on many evenings.”

Heidi is also a team leader at Space Careers, find out more here.