How Artificial Intelligence is changing the way we do Astronomy – and why that's not necessarily a bad thing

10 May 2025 - 29 May 2025

Region(s): Nationwide

Type(s): presentations

The 2025 Beatrice Hill Tinsley Lecture series is underway with Professor Anna Scaife as this year's speaker.

The lecture

We may not always notice it, but Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having an increasingly pervasive effect on our everyday lives: subtly altering the patterns of how we live, and how we work. The same is true for astronomy, where AI (and machine learning more generally) is now acknowledged as an essential tool for extracting useful scientific information from the vast volumes of data being recorded by current and up-coming telescopes. In this talk I will describe some of the ways that AI has recently been used very effectively in astronomy, why we need to continue developing new AI methods, and how these changes can lower the barriers to more people becoming involved in research.

About Professor Anna Scaife

Anna is a Professor of Radio Astronomy at Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and one of the five inaugural AI Fellows of the UK’s Alan Turing Institute. Previously she has worked at the University of Southampton, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and the University of Cambridge. She has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and an undergraduate degree from the University of Bristol.

She is part of a team working on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio-telescope, and she led the design of the computing and storage for the European SKA Regional Centre. She is currently the UK representative to the International Union of Radio Sciences for Radio Astronomy and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Techniques & Instruments (RASTI) journal.

In 2014, Anna was honoured by the World Economic Forum as one of thirty scientists under the age of 40 selected for their contributions to advancing the frontiers of science, engineering or technology in areas of high societal impact. In 2017 she was awarded the Blaauw Chair in Astrophysics (prize chair) at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands for excellence in research, broad knowledge of astronomy and an outstanding international status in astronomy. In 2019, Anna received the Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, awarded for outstanding invention, improvement, or development of astronomical instrumentation or techniques.

Anna will be accompanied by her husband Professor Rene Breton who is also available to give a range of talks.

About Professor Rene Breton

Rene is a Professor of Astrophysics at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and is currently Deputy Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. He has held multiple prestigious grants such as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, a European Research Council Starter Grant and a GCRF Foundation Grant. His main research interests revolve around the study of pulsars, which he uses to attempt to understand matter under extreme density, gravity, and magnetic fields.

Rene also has a keen interest for science communication and has delivered hundreds of public talks (and occasional radio and television interviews) since he was a teenager.

Anna's lecture dates and locations

• Sat, 10 May: Whakatāne at the RASNZ Conference

• Sun, 11 May: Whakatāne Astronomical Society

• Tue, 13 May: Whanganui Astronomical Society

• Wed, 14 May: Wellington Astronomical Society (SOLD OUT)

• Thu, 15 May: Victoria University of Wellington (VIC) Academic talk.

• Sat, 17 May: Blenheim

• Mon, 19 May: University of Canterbury (UC) Academic talk. Tickets here.

• Mon, 19 May: Canterbury Astronomical Society (CAS)

• Tues, 20 May, Barclay Theatre, Tūhura Otago Museum. Entry by donation to cover costs. Tickets here.

• Thu, 22 May: Stewart Island/Rakiura hosted by the Stewart Island Promotion Association

• Mon, 26 May: Hamilton Astronomical Society. Tickets here.

• Wed, 28 May: Auckland Astronomical Society. Tickets here.

• Thu, 29 May: Academic Talk at Auckland University (AU + AUT)

Rene's talk titles

• Einstein's Relativity: Tested to the Limit with Pulsars

• The Space Orchestra

• Cosmic Fireworks

• Top Astrophysics Discoveries from the Last Decade

• 55 Years of Pulsar Research

For more information on this lecture series and history behind it: www.rasnz.org.nz/rasnz-info/rasnz-lecture-trust-bht-1