Megan Schwamb

Biography

In 2006, Schwamb graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. summa cum laude with Distinction in physics. She went on to study astrophysics in the California Institute of Technology, graduated Master of Science in 2008. Schwamb finished her Ph.D. in planetary science in 2011, also from the California Institute of Technology. Her thesis was researching "Beyond Sedna: Probing the Distant Solar System", and her advisor was Michael Brown.

Between 2010 and 2013, Schwamb was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. She worked at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Academia Sinica in Taipei in Republic of China (Taiwan) from 2013 until 2016. Schwamb then held the post of assistant scientist at the Gemini Observatory, before moving to Queen's University, Belfast. She is the creator and co-founder of Astrotweeps, a Rotation Curation account on astronomy.

Schwamb is involved in citizen science projects. She is a founding science team member for Planet Four, a project intended for mapping seasonal fans on the South Pole of Mars. She is also part of the science team leading Planet Hunters, a project in which users analyze data from the NASA Kepler Space Mission while searching for exoplanets.