FMARS Crew Biographies Emily MacDonald Hi, my name is Emily MacDonald and I am part of the FMARS crew for 2002. Born on 21st of May, 1977, I grew up in a lovely wee town called Troon on the West Coast of Scotland. I was always interested in astronomy and remember first wanting to 'go to the stars' at the age of 6!! Yes, even that long ago I can remember wanting to be an astronaut and it definitely wasn't just a phase!! A few years into high school I remember asking what I could study at University that combined astronomy, physics and maths, my favourite subjects, and was told about Astrophysics. So, after finishing high school in 1995, I went to Edinburgh University to do a Masters in Astrophysics. I had a great time at Edinburgh Uni - met some of my best friends there and found the course continually fascinating, as well as very challenging. During my time there I, along with a lot of help from my friends, started up the astronomy society which we kept running for our last 3 years in Edinburgh. On finishing in June 2000 I decided that I wanted to travel and also wanted to gain as much experience in research astronomy as possible before deciding which field to specialize in for my PhD. Fortunately I was awarded a scholarship at the Anglo Australian Observatory for 3 months so went straight to Sydney to work on starburst galaxies! This then led to my being offered another research scholarship at Melbourne University where I went, after spending 8 weeks travelling up the East Coast of Australia and around New Zealand. To end my year out I managed to fit in a few weeks in Zimbabwe visiting my relatives (my mum comes from there) before going to Hawaii for 3 months to work at the Joint Astronomy Centre. I then returned to the UK to start my PhD in cosmology, a completely different area from any of the research I did in my year out! So just now I am at Oxford University in the first year of a PhD trying to work out something about the star formation history of the Universe!!! Astronomy aside, during my PhD I would like to train for a private pilots lisence, to learn to scuba dive and to learn another language, all of which will stand me in good stead (I hope) when I apply to join the astronaut training core. Outside of astronomy and astronautics I like, well, pretty much everything. Music plays a big part in my life and I play the piano, flute and enjoy singing. I also like sports in general, particularly tennis and field hockey. Travelling has also become very important to me - after backpacking for over a year I've got the travel bug bigtime but I have choosen the ideal subject to study, with regular observing trips to Hawaii, La Palma, Chile and many more exciting places. No where more exciting though than the Arctic which is where the FMARS project will take me soon! I am looking forward to the challenges that it will inevitably bring and to getting a taste of what life on Mars will really be like - good practise for when I eventually go!!!
FMARS-7 | FMARS Index | About | News | Multimedia Copyright © 2002 The Mars Society. All rights reserved.