Marina Rejkuba: biography
Last update: October 2013
I was born in Zagreb, Croatia, and I lived there until graduating from the
Classical
Gymnasium.
For the first year of university
I moved to nearby Slovenia in 1991, where I started the physics study
at the University of Ljubljana.
Returning to Zagreb in 1992 I continued from the second year
the studies at the
University of Zagreb, at the
Physics Faculty.
During that time I became interested in astronomy, and I took all courses
in astronomy and astrophysics offered at the University. Furthermore I gained
some more practical experience through
Visnjan Observatory, which then
led me to Italy for my undergraduate thesis work.
I spent between 1996-1998 about two and a half years at the
Asiago Observatory, in Italy,
observing and studying mostly symbiotic variables, a sub-class of
cataclysmic variable stars. Having graduated in Physics from the University
of Zagreb in 1998, I moved to Santiago, Chile, for the postgraduate study in
physics, specializing in astrophysics.
I obtained the PhD in Physics at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in 2002.
Between 2000-2002, I spent two years as an ESO PhD Student in Garching,
Germany. I liked it so much that I returned there as an ESO fellow in the fall of 2002,
and then moved in 2005 to a staff astronomer position at the ESO's
User Support Department.
Since then I have supported
VIMOS,
FORS,
FLAMES, and
VIRCAM
observers and am a member of the ESO Survey Team. In 2008 I became the project scientist
responsible for the requirements and evolution of the observation handling tools
(P2PP3, OT3)
for Paranal Observatory and am contributing to the requirements for the observation reporting tool
(gNLT). Since 2012 I am the head of the
User Support Astronomers Group (USG). Within this managerial role I am responsible
to optimize resources, distribute the day-to-day duties and supervise the daily
support work of USG members.
My scientific research is focused on the study of nearby galaxies, their resolved stellar content and globular cluster systems with the aim to understand their formation and evolution. My favourite galaxy is Centaurus A, or rather the optical counterpart of this famous radio galaxy: NGC 5128, which I studied during my PhD, but also continued observing and investigating its properties later. More recently I have turned my interests closer to home, to the study of the Milky Way bulge.