Serena Viti

Viti was an undergraduate at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, where she gained a BSc in Astrophysics in 1994. She was awarded a PhD from University College London (UCL) for her work on the infrared spectra of cool stars and sunspots in 1997.[3] After her PhD, Viti became a post-doctoral fellow at UCL in the field of star formation and astrochemistry, followed by a fixed-term lectureship at the CNR in Rome as a Herschel Scientist. She returned to UCL in October 2003 for an STFC Advanced Fellowship and became a lecturer of Astrophysics in 2004. She was promoted to Reader in 2007 and to Professor of Astrophysics in 2012. Viti became head of the Astrophysics department at UCL in 2016.[4]

Viti is on the editorial board for Molecular Astrophysics.[5] She is the current secretary of the European Astronomical Society,[6] was a Royal Astronomical Society council member (2002-2005), and serves on several STFC panels and committees.[7][8] The central focus of her research is in the field of astrochemistry and the study of molecules in space.[9] She is a member of the International Astronomical Union,[10] the Royal Astronomical Society, the European Astronomical Society[11] and the Astrophysical Chemistry Society. She led an exhibition on astrochemistry at the 2004 Royal Society Summer Exhibition.[12] Viti has co-authored a book on observational molecular astronomy.[13]

Viti was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Fowler Award for Astronomy in 2006[14] and the Australian Astronomical Observatory Distinguished Visitor Fellowship in 2015.[15]