Dr Heloise Stevance

Dr Heloise Stevance is a Research Associate at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford.

Heloise joined Oxford in April 2023 as one of the first Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Fellows. Her science focuses on developing my Virtual Research Assistant for the ATLAS (and future) sky survey to help astronomers find the cosmic explosions that result from stars dying, colliding or being “eaten” by a black hole.

Originally born and raised in France, Heloise moved to the UK to study Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield in 2011. After working as a support astronomer at the Isaac Newton Group in La Palma for a year, Heloise obtained her Masters of Physics in 2015. She subsequently obtained a PhD in 2019 and went on to join the Auckland stellar evolution group. Her broad background within the field of transient astronomy and my hands-on experience with telescopes is proving essential in the design of the VRA.

A keen science communicator, she was honoured to receive the title of Beatrice Tinsley Lecturer by the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand in 2021, and was awarded the Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship 2024.