The Team Members

Black Hole Hunters is led by Adam McMaster (The University of Southampton and The Open University), Hugh Dickinson (The Open University), and Matthew Middleton (The University of Southampton), in collaboration with Nora Eisner (Flatiron Institute), Andrew Norton (The Open University) and Stephen Serjeant (The Open University).

Adam McMaster

I'm an astronomy PhD student at the Open University and visiting researcher at the University of Southampton. I'm interested in time-domain astronomy and astrophysical transients, as well as methods of finding unusual or interesting things in large astronomical data sets. Before my PhD I worked as a web developer, most recently here at the Zooniverse where I was a member of the development team in Oxford.

Hugh Dickinson

I'm a lecturer in astronomy at the Open University in the UK. Modern scientific instruments can (and do) provide us with abundant data that are both exquisite in their precision and challenging in their analysis. I'm excited by the many ways that human beings and computers can work together to help solve some of the trickiest and most intriguing problems in modern science.

Matthew Middleton

I’m Matt and I'm an Associate Professor of astronomy working at the University of Southampton. I’ve spent most of my career researching black holes and how they interact with the Universe. I’ve studied supermassive black holes at the centre of distant galaxies and smaller, stellar mass black holes in our own Milky Way. By studying these fascinating objects, I hope to learn more about the way they can bend and warp the spacetime around them, which in turn can help reveal fundamental facts about the nature of the Universe. |

Nora Eisner

I’m a Research Fellow at the Flatiron Institute in New York City. Even though my research primarily focuses on the detection of exoplanets, I love exploring time-series data to see what other exciting objects and phenomena can be found! I’m currently the lead of the Planet Hunters TESS Zooniverse project and look forward to seeing what we can continue to find in the TESS data.

Andrew Norton

I'm Professor of Astrophysics Education at the Open University where my research focusses on time domain astrophysics of stellar systems. I'm also the lead for the SuperWASP Variable Stars Project here on Zooniverse and am fascinated by the wide variety of weird and wonderful objects that surveys such as SuperWASP can reveal.

Stephen Serjeant

I'm a professor of astronomy at the Open University in the UK, and I'm a "recovering blob counter". I fell in love with astronomy aged about five, when I would also not eat baked beans without counting them first. I've spent most of my time working in infrared astronomy, where distant starbursting galaxies look like blobs in infrared images. The numbers of blobs tell you how much star formation went on early in the Universe. I'm fascinated by gravitational lensing, where you can see the warping of space and time as Einstein predicted. Some bright infrared blobs are only bright because of this lensing magnification, and I'm really hoping this Zooniverse project will uncover some new discoveries of lensing by black holes. I'm the vice-president of the Society for Popular Astronomy, and you can follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/StephenSerjeant.

Our Supporters

The original SuperWASP: Black Hole Hunters project was developed with the help of the ESCAPE project. ESCAPE - The European Science Cluster of Astronomy & Particle Physics ESFRI Research Infrastructures has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement n° 824064.

The SuperWASP project is currently funded and operated by Warwick University and Keele University, and was originally set up by Queen’s University Belfast, the Universities of Keele, St. Andrews and Leicester, the Open University, the Isaac Newton Group, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the South African Astronomical Observatory and by STFC.