About the Editors
Like the other Nature titles, Nature Astronomy has no external editorial board. Instead, all editorial decisions are made by a dedicated team of professional editors, with relevant research and editorial backgrounds.
Chief Editor: May Chiao
May was a Senior Editor for Nature Physics, with responsibility for its astrophysics content, and has previously been an editor for Nature and Nature Materials. After working in radio astronomy with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope group in Canada, she went on to obtain her PhD in 1999 from McGill University, in low-temperature physics. She undertook postdoctoral research at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge and the Solid State Laboratory at ETH-Zürich, investigating fundamental properties of exotic magnets as well as superconductors and superfluids. May is based in the London office.
Locum Associate Editor: Sayali Avachat
Sayali’s primary research interests include active galactic nuclei, fundamental physics and numerical modeling of extragalactic jets, black holes and quasars. After graduating with a PhD in Space Sciences from the Florida Institute of Technology in 2016, Sayali worked at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA, India) on developing astronomy education and outreach programs. She facilitated teachers’ training in astronomy education for college students. Most recently she worked for Maryland Science Center, Baltimore, on developing science programs for early childhood education. She has also been entrepreneurial in conducting STEM workshops for students and science writing for a variety of readers. Sayali is based in the Washington DC office.
Senior Editor: Morgan Hollis (currently on leave)
Morgan joined the team in 2021, having previously been deputy press officer at the Royal Astronomical Society and an assistant editor at Monthly Notices of the RAS. He gained his PhD from University College London, working on the atmospheric characterisation of extrasolar planets, and his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Warwick. The areas he covers for Nature Astronomy include extragalactic astronomy, theoretical astrophysics and cosmology, and his more general interests include geology and geophysics, atmospheric physics, the history of science, and the interfaces between science and the arts. Morgan is based in the London office.
morgan.hollis@springernature.com
Senior Editor: Luca Maltagliati
After working on solar physics at the Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri (Firenze, Italy), Luca switched to planetary science for his doctorate on the Martian water cycle with Mars Express observations at the Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, continuing this work as a postdoctoral fellow at the LATMOS laboratory (Guyancourt, France). Luca then conducted research on Titan’s atmosphere and surface with Cassini observations at the Observatoire de Paris and the Commissariat pour l’Énergie Atomique, before returning to the Observatoire de Paris to work on the Exoplanet.eu database of extrasolar planets. Luca’s main area of expertise is atmospheric physics and the climate of terrestrial planets, observed in remote sensing spectrometry. Luca is based in the London office.
Senior Editor: Paul Woods
Paul gained his PhD in astrophysics from UMIST/University of Manchester in 2005, having also completed a two-year studentship at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. He has since pursued research at NASA JPL, Pasadena; Jodrell Bank, University of Manchester; University College London and Queen’s University, Belfast. His principal interest has been interstellar chemistry and dust, studying observationally and theoretically the complex chemistries and mineralogies of hot cores, protoplanetary discs, AGB stars, proto-planetary and planetary nebulae. For Nature Astronomy, he primarily covers stars, the Galaxy and local galaxies, including transients such as fast radio bursts, gamma-ray bursts and tidal disruption events. Paul is based in the London office.
