Laura Watkins, PhD

Dr. Laura Watkins is an ESA-AURA Astronomer working in the Science Mission Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute on various Hubble-related activities. Her primary research interests are the spatial and velocity distributions of small stellar systems, both internal and global, and what they can tell us about their formation, evolution, and present state. She studies the kinematics using proper motions from Hubble and from Gaia, and uses dynamical models to connect the observations to the underlying physics. She also works with simulated systems to test models and inform future observations. Before taking up her current role at the Institute , Dr. Watkins was a postdoc at the University of Vienna, the European Southern Observatory Headquarters in Garching, STScI, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg.