Laurie Rousseau-Nepton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Laurie Rousseau-Nepton | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1985 or 1986 (age 39–40)[1] |
| Alma mater | Université Laval |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astrophysics |
| Institutions | University of Toronto |
| Thesis | Étude des régions de formation stellaire dans les galaxies spirales avec SpIOMM (2017) |
| Academic advisors | Carmelle Robert |
Laurie Rousseau-Nepton is a Canadian astronomer at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and was the first Indigenous woman in Canada to obtain a Ph.D. in astrophysics.[2][3][4]
Rousseau-Nepton is an Innu woman whose family are from the Mashteuiatsh reserve in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec.[5][6] Her mother was a civil engineering technician and her father was a civil engineer.[6] She grew up near Quebec City, and lived for two years on the Wendake reserve.[7] Her interest in science was sparked as a child when she went on a hunting trip with her father to the Ashuapmushuan Wildlife Reserve in Quebec. During the day, she became attentive to details, observing small changes in the environment to be a better hunter.[8] At night, she was able to observe changes in the night sky such as shooting stars and the aurora borealis.[9]
During her studies in Cégep, she was attracted by physics because it was both challenging and offered freedom in methods of problem solving.[5]
Rousseau-Nepton completed her bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees from Université Laval.[5] She received her Ph.D. in 2017, under the supervision of Carmelle Robert.[10] Her doctoral research involved studying the HII regions of nearby spiral galaxies, using the SpIOMM, an imaging Fourier transform spectrometer developed at University of Laval for the Mont-Mégantic Observatory.[10][11]
