Scholar Spotlight: Lina Florez

Our sixth TAURUS Scholar Spotlight is on Lina Florez, who comes to the TAURUS program from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she will soon be starting her final year. At UT Austin, Lina is working with Dr. David Wilson, using data from the Very Large Telescope to characterise a newly-discovered binary system.

Having grown up watching science documentaries, Lina first became interested in a career in science during high school due to really enjoying her physics classes. Her school encouraged her to seek out opportunities for links with universities, and Lina found her first summer research position at the University of Illinois while still in high school. With the help of the research advisor, Lina was able to secure sponsorship to attend that university as an undergraduate.

“In the beginning science was really intimidating to me,” she says, “but what I find interesting is there’s a lot that we don’t know, and I’d love to be a part of trying to understand that.” Lina has acted on that interest, undertaking multiple research projects at every stage of her education despite having to work three jobs to support herself through university. 

In addition to her work on a rare white dwarf-brown dwarf binary system at UT, Lina has developed instrumentation for the South Pole Telescope at the University of Illinois, worked on sky subtraction algorithms for the Subaru Telescope at Princeton and analyzed observations of quasars. Lina particularly enjoys the computational side of research: “I really like learning how to use my computer to analyze all of these huge sets of data and try to understand what’s going on.” These varied projects have given Lina an interest in, and understanding of, a broad range of areas within astronomy. She cites exoplanets and quasars as particular favourites. 

After her time at UT, Lina plans to apply for grad school to carry on working in astronomical research. Looking to the future, she sees programs like TAURUS helping to make the astronomical community more diverse. “When I started out I didn’t see anyone who looked like me who wanted to do what I wanted to do,” she notes, so the opportunity to work with a diverse group has been important. “I want to try and see more people like me in astronomy, so I go out of my way to tell people why I care about it so much.” 

Lina cites the advocates and mentors she has worked with as vital for helping her get to where she is now, and encourages students from similar backgrounds to do the same: “Try to reach out to people as soon as you can,” she says. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without their help. Also try to develop skill sets like coding, which are useful and will make you feel more comfortable when doing research. And try your best at school!”

Thus far Lina’s project at UT Austin is going very well, and she will be presenting her work at the AAS meeting in Hawaii next January. Come and see her there if you need a grad student!