Movers and Shakers - Belinda Wilkes

Belinda Wilkes is the Senior Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, and current director of the Chandra X-ray Center. She was born in Staffordshire, England and grew up in Albrighton, Shropshire, attending Wolverhampton Girls' High School before studying Physics and Astronomy at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland followed by a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Cambridge, England. In 1982 she moved to the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory as a NATO postdoctoral fellow and in 1984 to SAO's High Energy Astrophysics Division. Her research relates to multi-wavelength studies of quasars: galaxies containing super-massive black holes at their centers and the most luminous sources in the Universe.