User:AstroLudwig/sandbox

= Maria Drout =

Maria Drout is an American astrophysicist, Assistant Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and an Azrieli Global Scholar within the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Her research primarily focuses on the evolution, influence, and ultimate fate of massive stars, using both ground and spaced-based telescopes to study supernova explosions, other exotic transients, and populations of massive stars in nearby galaxies. A notable highlight of her career was being part of the team that, in 2017, first identified the visual light from a kilonova, an event generated by the merger of two neutron stars which resulted in gravitational waves detected on Earth. She currently serves on the boards for the CASTOR space mission and the Rubin Observatory. She is originally from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Early life and education
Dr. Drout earned her Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from Harvard University in 2016, focusing on the use of peculiar transients as probes of stellar evolution and mass loss. Her academic journey also includes earning a Master of Advanced Study in Theoretical Physics from the University of Cambridge in 2011 and a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Iowa in 2010. Before her current positions, she was a NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institute for Science from 2016 to 2018.