Portrait of a white young women with shoulder length blond hair smiling into the camera in front of a grey background.

Vanessa Graber

Dr, pronouns: she / her

  • TW20 0EX

Personal profile

Personal profile

Vanessa Graber is a theoretical astrophysicist and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. She specialises in the study of neutron stars and works at the interface of a variety of research areas (in particular astronomy, condensed-matter physics, nuclear theory, fluid dynamics, data science and machine learning) as she develops innovative, cross-disciplinary approaches to uncover the hidden properties of these fascinating compact objects.

Before joining Royal Holloway in 2024, Vanessa was a Senior Lecturer in Data Science at the University of Hertfordshire, and has held postdoctoral research fellowships at the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Previously, she obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Southampton, UK, in 2016 and a Physics Diplom (equivalent to MPhys) from the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany, in 2012.

More details can be found on Vanessa's personal webpage: https://vanessagraber.github.io/

Research interests

Vanessa Graber's research interests cover a wide variety of topics including:

  • the presence of macroscopic quantum phases in the interiors of neutron stars and their observational manifestations such as spin-glitches
  • simulation-based inference with neural networks for astrophysical parameter inferences
  • astrophysical constraints on the dense-matter nuclear equation of state
  • laboratory analogues (such as superfluid helium or Bose-Einstein condensates) to probe unknown neutron-star physics
  • neutron-star population synthesis to constrain the birth properties of these compact objects
  • Gross–Pitaevskii and Ginzburg–Landau-type models to study superfluid and superconducting physics

Education/Academic qualification

Applied Mathematics, PhD, Cosmic Condensates: Vortex, Fluxtube and Neutron Star Dynamics, University of Southampton

Oct 2012Aug 2016

Physics, Diplom (MPhys), Dynamics of Superfluid Neutron Stars, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen

Oct 2006Mar 2012

External positions

Senior Lecturer in Data Science, University of Hertfordshire

Feb 2024Sept 2024

Juan de la Cierva Incorporacíon Fellow, Institute of Space Sciences, IEEC-CSIC

May 2022Feb 2024

Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Space Sciences, IEEC-CSIC

Jan 2020Apr 2022

McGill Space Institute Fellow, McGill University

Oct 2016Dec 2019

Keywords

  • Astronomy
  • Square Kilometre Array
  • Radio pulsars
  • Magnetars
  • Astrophysics
  • Neutron stars
  • Cosmic superfluidity
  • Machine learning
  • Simulation-based inference
  • Convolutional neural networks
  • Nuclear & particle physics
  • Dense matter
  • Equation of state
  • Physical sciences not elsewhere classified
  • Condensed-matter physics
  • Superfluidity
  • Superconductivity
  • Ultra-cold gases

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

Recent external collaboration on country/territory level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots or