Dr. Anna Watts

Biography

Anna Watts is a Full Professor at the University of Amsterdam in the Faculty of Science. She completed her PhD in the General Relativity group at the University of Southampton in 2004, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in the USA and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany before moving to Amsterdam in 2008. She is a recipient of the NWO Vidi and ERC Starter Grant and serves as Secretary of the Steering Committee for the International Astronomical Union Division D, which focuses on High Energy Phenomena and Fundamental Physics. Anna's research is centered on violent dynamical events associated with neutron stars, including thermonuclear explosions, starquakes, and magnetic flares. Her work aims to understand the underlying physics driving these processes and involves studying the ultra-strong magnetic fields that exist in the cores of neutron stars. She is also actively involved in the development of future high-energy space telescopes, co-chairing the Dense Matter Science Working Group for the proposed Enhanced X-ray Timing Polarization (eXTP) telescope. Additionally, she is the Programme Director for the Joint Bachelor's Degree in Physics & Astronomy.

Research Interests

Experience