Sara Ellison

Background and Education

Dr. Ellison enrolled in Physics and Space Science in University of Kent in 1993 and received her Master of Physics from University of Kent in 1997. She went on to earn her PhD degree in Astronomy from University of Cambridge in 2000. Afterwards she was an ESO fellow working at Chile for three years, and in 2003 joined the faculty of University of Victoria as an Assistant Professor. The same year, she was selected as Canada Research Chair (Tier II), an grant given to extraordinary emerging researchers by the Canadian government. In 2008, she became an Associate Professor and in 2014 a full Professor at the University of Victoria.

Research

The main themes of Ellison's research are studying absorption lines in quasar spectra and studying the effects of environment on galaxy evolution. Her quasar work has focused on studying the chemistry of gas along the line-of-sight to quasars such as Damped Lyman-alpha systems and the Lyman-alpha forest. Much of Ellison's most recent work has focused on using close pairs of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to investigate how galaxy interactions affect galaxy evolution.

Personal

Besides her work in astronomy, Professor Ellison is also very involved in science outreach since 1992. She has appeared in CBC Radio's Quarks and Quirks to answer questions about lunar landing sites. In a 2015 interview with Vancouver Sun, she spoke about how she got interested in Astronomy. Her hobbies include painting on stretched canvas in acrylics. An accomplished amateur athlete, Ellison has a Boston Qualifying marathon time and age group wins in both running and triathlon.

Honours and Awards