The Cosmic Savannah, Dr Jacinta Delhaize & Dr Daniel Cunnama

Africa’s beautiful dark skies and vast plains make it an ideal place for cutting-edge astronomy research. Presented by Dr Jacinta Delhaize and Dr Daniel Cunnama, The Cosmic Savannah podcast showcases the world-class astronomy and astrophysics coming from the African continent. Hear about the fascinating people and discoveries coming out of Africa and how they are relevant on the world stage, as well as the indigenous people of South Africa’s relationship with the cosmos, pulsars, what we can learn from thermonuclear explosions on white dwarfs and rising stars of African astronomy. 

Recent episodes include conversations with: 

• Dr Marisa Geyer, pulsar astronomer and commissioning scientist at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), who explains her research on pulsars and mysterious Fast Radio Bursts;
• Dr Miriam Nyamai, who studies thermonuclear eruptions on the surface of white dwarf stars; and,
• Dr Michelle Lochner, senior lecturer at the University of the Western Cape, who is developing new machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to analyse the massive astronomical datasets of next-generation telescopes.

You can follow her work here:

Twitter: @jdelhaize and @cosmicsavannah
Facebook: facebook.com/jdelhaize
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jacinta-delhaize
Website: jacintadelhaize.com

Olga González-Sanabria

Olga González-Sanabria is a Puerto Rican chemical engineer who developed the long cycle-life nickel-hydrogen batteries that have been used on the International Space Station, the Hubble telescope and Mars Odyssey.

González-Sanabria worked as the Director of Engineering at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, responsible for engineering design and development, fabrication, systems engineering and integration, and systems analysis.

Originally from Patillas, Puerto Rico, she started her academic career at the University of Puerto Rico. She earned her master’s degree in chemical engineering at the University of Toledo in Ohio.

Over the three decades that she worked for NASA she earned several awards, the most notable being the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal. In 2021 she was inducted into the NASA Glenn Research Center Hall of Fame for her lifetime achievements, and was the highest-ranking Hispanic at NASA Glenn. Now retired from NASA after 32 years service, she currently works as a consultant.

You can follow her work here:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/olga-gonzalez-sanabria-7100371a

Further reading

• Olga D. González-Sanabria, Wikipedia
• Olga Gonzalez-Sanabria, NASA
• Olga D. González-Sanabria, Glenn Research Center, NASA
• “Our mission is to take technologies that are on the cusp of being proven, and take [them] to the next step.”, Jennifer Hogeland, Hispanic Executive
• Olga D. González-Sanabria – National Hispanic American Heritage Month 2015 – 9/15 to 10/2015, Zay, Adafruit
• Women’s History Month 2020: Women Scientists Shaping Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, 19 March 2020

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Dr Robin Wall Kimmerer

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two ways of knowledge together.

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings – asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass – offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk here and your purchase will support a local independent bookshop of your choice!

You can follow her work here:

Website: www.robinwallkimmerer.com

Dr Rose Dieng-Kuntz

Rose Dieng-Kuntz was a computer scientist who studied artificial intelligence and the sharing of information via the World Wide Web. She was also one of the first people to work on the semantic web, beginning her work on this subject just a few years after the web itself was launched and before its use became widespread.

The semantic web was a huge step forward for the web, and Dieng-Kuntz described it as “a web of knowledge linking individuals, organisations, countries and continents”. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) states that “The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries.”

She said, “The research we are aiming for seeks to improve cooperation between business and the community by building ‘knowledge webs’, a goal that is in phase with Europe’s target of evolving from an ‘information society’ to a ‘knowledge society’.”

Dieng-Kuntz further worked on combining the semantic web with intelligent agents, a concept developed from artificial intelligence where machines are able to talk to other machines, allowing the semantic web to be automated.

Born in Senegal, Dieng-Kuntz worked for the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Computer Science and Automation (INRIA) on Artificial Intelligence from 1985 until her death in 2008. She was the first African woman to be awarded a diploma at the renowned École Polytechnique in Paris, France, and in 2005, she won the Irène Joliot-Curie prize, awarded annually to outstanding women scientists by the French Research Ministry and the EADS Group.

Further reading

• Rose Dieng-Kuntz, Wikipedia
• Rose Dieng-Kuntz, informaticienne (1956-2008), Dieyi Diouf, Femmes savantes, femmes de science
• SENEGAL-FRANCE: Death of web pioneer, Jane Marshal, University World News, 20 July 2008
• Women in STEM advent calendar: Day 19 – Dr Rose Dieng-Kuntz, Stephanie, FindingAda, 19 December 2018
• Rose Dieng-Kuntz, pionnière du web (X1975, 1956-2008), École Polytechnique, 2019

What are comets made of? – Dr Sheila Kanani, 2016

Planetary scientist Dr Sheila Kanani explores the history of comet science, and makes a comet nucleus live on stage. 

Dr Sheila Kanani is a planetary physicist, science presenter, secondary school physics teacher and space comedienne with a background in astrophysics and astronomy research from UK universities. She is currently the education, outreach and diversity officer for the Royal Astronomical Society in London. 

Her research has taken her to the Jodrell Bank Observatory, an Australian telescope facility searching for exoplanets in Sydney and to an old mansion in Surrey where she used the Cassini spacecraft to study the Lord of the Rings, Saturn. Sheila teaches and mentors at Space School UK, is a STEM ambassador for science and enjoys visiting schools, giving talks and workshops, and inspiring future astronauts of any age! She has a keen interest in science comedy in pubs, theatres and science festivals and plays the saxophone and field hockey in her spare time.

You can follow her work here:

Website: https://saturnsheila.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaturnSheila
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/dr-sheila-kanani-b9942a1

Recorded at the IET, you can watch the rest of the Ada Lovelace Day Live 2016 playlist here.