Postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck institute for Astrophysics in Munich, Germany.
colecampbell [dot] johnston [at] kuleuven [dot] be
Hi! I’m a postdoctoral fellow studying stellar evolution, pulsating stars, and binaries.
Employment history
Newton International Fellow
Royal Society | University of Surrey – Guilford, UK
(11/2024 – current)
I am starting as a Royal Society Newton International Fellow with the University of Surrey to work with Dr. Rob Izzard on scalable implementations of chemical processes in stellar evolution calculations, and developing simulation based inference techniques to infer gradients in the stellar interior from asteroseismic observables.
Postdoctoral fellow
Max Planck institute for Astrophysics — Munich, Germany
(11/2023 – 11/2024)
I was a Max Planck Fellow working in the group of Director Dr. Selma de Mink on investigating the impact that tides, mass transfer, and mass loss have on stellar pulsations.
Guest professor
KU Leuven – Leuven, Belgium
(06/2021 – current)
Within my capacity as a guest professor at KU Leuven, I help supervise PhD students and work with the group of Prof. Dr. Conny Aerts on asteroseismology of binary stars in BlackGEM data.
Postdoctoral researcher
Radboud University – Nijmegen, The Netherlands
(06/2021 – 10/2023)
I worked with data collected by the BlackGEM telescope array and its pathfinder MeerLICHT. I used these data to search for variable stars and binaries across the Southern sky. I also developed several tools for the time-series analysis of sparsely sampled multi-filter data.
Postdoctoral researcher
KU Leuven – Leuven, Belgium
(06/2020 – 05/2021)
I researched pulsating stars in eclipsing binaries, and used these stars to calibrate state-of-the-art stellar evolution codes.
Awards
2021
2015 – 2016
2014
2014
2013
2011
Springer Thesis Award (Springer Nature)
Belgian American Educational Foundation Fellowship (KU Leuven)
Jason A. Cardelli Memorial Research Award (Villanova University)
Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award (American Astronomical Society)
Rev. Edward F. Jenkins, O.S.A. Endowed Scholarship (Villanova University)
Edwin F. Bailey Scholarship Award (Villanova University)
Education history
PhD in Astrophysics
KU Leuven – Leuven, Belgium
(08/2016 – 05/2020)
Dissertation: Interior modelling of massive stars in multiple systems
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Conny Aerts, Dr. Andrew Tkachenko, Dr. Steven Bloemen
Pre-doc / MSc in Astronomy & Astrophysics
KU Leuven – Leuven, Belgium
(07/2015 – 07/2016)
Distinctions: Grote Onderscheiding (Magna Cum Laude) – 81.59 %
Master Thesis: An Observational Study of the Binarity and the Oscillations of the HW Vir star PTF1 J072455.75+125300.3
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Conny Aerts
BSc in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Villanova University, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
(08/2010 – 12/2014)
Minor degrees: Physics, Mathematics
Stellar-shenanigans 