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Jessica Dempsey appointed director of ASTRON

The NWO-I Foundation Board has appointed Prof. Jessica Dempsey as director of ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, as from 1 May 2022. The appointment is the result of an international recruitment campaign.
"Dempsey was selected for a well-established and broad track record in the three main areas of ASTRON: astronomy, instrumentation in radio astronomy, and observatory operations", according to Prof. Marcel Levi, president of the NWO-I Foundation Board.
"She is a world-renowned scientist and has successfully led an astronomical institution in a complex international environment with many partners and with a very active attitude towards more inclusion, equality, and diversity".

Dempsey has a background in radio interferometry and is currently deputy director of the East Asian Observatory in Hawaii, USA. There she established international partnerships and expanded funding opportunities for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). Her scientific focus is on wide-field surveys of the diverse molecules in the galaxy at radio wavelengths.

"It is an incredible honor to be offered this opportunity to work with the dedicated and extremely talented ASTRON team. Having worked for over a decade at the JCMT, Dutch-built and operated for a large part of that time, it feels a bit like coming home. ASTRON and the broader Dutch astronomical community are world leaders in so many cutting-edge areas of astronomy, and the next decade promises even greater opportunities and frontiers for ASTRON and the Netherlands. I'm excited to be a part of that adventure", says Dempsey.

The new director has a passionate commitment to creating greater diversity, equity, and opportunity at all levels of astronomy and to enhancing opportunities for girls to become future leaders in science and technology careers. Dempsey was the first Australian female scientist to work at the geographic South Pole, where she spent five summers building site-testing instruments and a robotic telescope before wintering at the South Pole station in 2005 for the Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver cosmic microwave background (ACBAR CMB) experiment. She was also a member of the Breakthrough Prize-winning Event Horizon Telescope team, which captured an image of a black hole for the first time.

Source: ASTRON website

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