Welcome to episode 30 of exploring astrophysics with me, Vikram Bhamre. Today I am joined by Dr. Kareem El-Badry, a researcher who works mostly in the analysis of binary star systems and has obtained the nickname ‘Black hole destroyer’ for some of his past work. Stay tuned to hear more about that!

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of exploring astrophysics. Today I am speaking to Dr Lynne Hillenbrand, a professor of Astronomy at Caltech who is an expert in the formation and evolution of young stars and the formation of star clusters. Dr. Hillenbrand spoke to me about trying to learn more about the evolution of these young stars, whose processes are often hidden behind dust and gasses from the Nebula it is in. Her work is partly focus on the properties of the circumstellar disc, a disc of gas and dust that rotates around a young star.

Today I am joined by Dr Maria Charisi, a postdoctoral associate at Vanderbilt university. Her expertise is in looking for Supermassive Black-Hole Binaries: which are systems that are formed during the collisions of galaxies and weigh well over hundreds of millions of times our Sun. Dr Charisi also talked about her experience in academia and how she would describe it to someone potentially looking for a career in research.