Profile
Michelle Bieger
Postgraduate
Telephone: 01392 725519
Extension: (Streatham) 5519
Born in Germany, raised in America and China. I completed my undergraduate degree in September 2018 at the University of Hertfordshire; earning an MPhys (Hons) with an upper 2:1.
During my undergraduate degree, I used my third and fourth year projects to deepen my understanding of atmospheric physics; with my final thesis titled, "Determining the Dust Concentration of Mixed Dust/Pollution Plumes from Lidar Measurements in East Asia." The dissertation investigated the nature of aerosols in the atmosphere with supervisors Dr. Detlef Mueller and Dr. Boyan Tatarov. Whilst Dr. Mueller's lidar team used a self-contained lidar GUI to process and analyse data from their lidar, I pulled that data and analysed the various outputs from the lidar equation in Python. Analysing each output separately enabled me to build a better understanding of how dust and anthropogenic pollution interacts in the atmosphere, and how to create self-contained Python code from the ground-up. Along the way, I learned the design and operating principles of lidar.
Other research projects I was involved in included:
- Data analysis of elemental abundances of dwarf spheroidal galaxies in the local group, with Dr Chiaki Kobayashi and Dr Gabriele Cescutti
- Optimising model of brown dwarf atmospheres, with Dr Ben Burningham
Currently my research interests are in characterising exoplanet atmospheres.