Submitted by Matthew Bothwell on Mon, 08/12/2025 - 11:18
Professor Sera Markoff has been appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. One of the oldest named professorships in the world – founded in 1704 after Sir Isaac Newton oversaw its creation – previous Plumian Professors include distinguished astronomers Sir Arthur Eddington, Sir Fred Hoyle, and Lord Martin Rees.
Professor Markoff – who studied physics at MIT, and graduated from the University of Arizona with a PhD in theoretical astrophysics in 2000 – is an internationally recognised expert on black hole astrophysics, working at the interface with astroparticle physics. Her research focuses on understanding the extreme interactions of matter occurring around compact objects like black holes, and how they determine the ways in which black holes affect their surroundings.
Among key leadership roles, she is a founding member of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, which brought together an array of telescopes spanning the globe – effectively creating an Earth-sized telescope – and received global media coverage when it captured the first images of two black holes and the ‘shadows’ of their event horizons, in 2019 and 2022. Along with prizes for that work ,such as the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, she has been recognised with the top career awards by the Dutch Research Council and the European Research Council, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is currently Full Professor of theoretical high energy astrophysics at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam, and helped found the Gravitation and AstroParticle Physics Amsterdam (GRAPPA) Centre of Excellence. As the 17th Plumian Professor, she will be the first woman to hold the position.
She said: “I’m thrilled to be starting a new chapter of my career at Cambridge. Many amazing people in my field have held this position before me, so it’s an incredible opportunity to be able to carry the baton forward. I really enjoy bringing people together and building up new initiatives, and Cambridge offers a uniquely stimulating environment to further develop the field of astroparticle physics and black hole research, both within the University and UK-wide.
“Among other things, I’m interested in how black holes manage to accelerate high-energy particles to energies millions of times what is achievable on Earth at CERN,” she said. “So that these objects become our fundamental physics laboratories in space, to explore physics in regimes we can never hope to reproduce here. There’s huge potential to grow this field at Cambridge, especially within the Kavli Institute for Cosmology because of where it sits at the interface of physics and astrophysics.”
Prof Markoff – who will be a Fellow at Newnham College – will also work to encourage more people from under-represented backgrounds into the field, drawing on her own “non-traditional” journey into astrophysics.
“I didn’t come from a scientific or academic family, so my interest in astrophysics really just came from reading science fiction and comic books. Given that I thought I would go to art school, it was quite an odd thing for me to be interested in, but these books exposed me to the ideas of black holes and instilled a desire to explore the Universe. I was also lucky enough to have many supportive teachers, but I never seriously thought that I would be able to go into a career like this – now I like to joke that I do sci-fi for a living.
“There’s still a stereotype about who does this kind of work, and also a lack of opportunity for many people to study science. I consistently strive to improve opportunity and access, particularly for people who don’t have advantages. It’s an enormous privilege to be able to live your life being curious, and I feel very strongly that science is something anybody can do if they are interested enough, and if they put the work in.”
Professor Mark Wyatt, Co-Director of the Institute of Astronomy, at the University of Cambridge, said: “The Institute of Astronomy is delighted to welcome Professor Sera Markoff as our next Plumian Professor. Such prestigious positions provide the opportunity to attract extraordinary talent to the UK and Professor Markoff is no exception.
“Professor Markoff brings with her an exciting scientific programme on the study of accretion on to black holes, which she carries out through observations using cutting edge astronomical facilities and computational simulations of the underlying processes. Her scientific vision and interdisciplinary approach will shape the landscape of astronomy for decades to come, not just across Cambridge, but also nationally and internationally.”
The Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy is one of the two named professorships within Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy – alongside the Professor of Astrophysics (1909), which Professor Hiranya Peiris has held since 2023.