Rate My Professor Kate Maguire

Professor Kate Maguire is a Professor in Physics at Trinity College Dublin, where she leads a research group focused on explosive astrophysical phenomena, including supernovae, electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational waves, and exotic extra-galactic transients. She earned her BSc from the National University of Ireland and her PhD in Astrophysics from Queen's University Belfast in 2010. Following her doctorate, she held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Oxford, followed by a Marie Curie and ESO Fellowship at the European Southern Observatory. She then served as a Lecturer and STFC Ernest Rutherford Advanced Fellow at Queen's University Belfast before joining Trinity College Dublin in 2019. In 2024, she was elected a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin (FTCD).

Professor Maguire's research investigates the progenitor systems of Type Ia supernovae, their use as cosmological distance indicators, and the extremes of supernova explosions. She is Principal Investigator of the Time Domain Extragalactic Survey (TiDES) within the 4MOST instrument consortium, a member of the Executive Committee of the ENGRAVE collaboration, and formerly chaired the Target and Alert Team of the ePESSTO+ collaboration from 2014 to 2019. Her major achievements include securing two European Research Council grants: the Starting Grant SUPERSTARS (2018-2024) and the Consolidator Grant CosmicLeap (2024-), valued at approximately €2 million, which explores white dwarf explosions using machine learning to advance precision cosmology. Key publications include 'A kilonova as the electromagnetic counterpart to a gravitational-wave source' (Nature, 2017), 'Supernova SN 2011fe from an exploding carbon-oxygen white dwarf star' (Nature, 2011), and 'PESSTO: survey description and products from the first data release' (Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2015). Her work has significantly contributed to understanding cosmic explosions and their role in element formation and universe expansion studies.