Full Professor
Lorraine is Full Professor of Astronomy at UCD School of Physics and Director of UCD’s Centre for Space Research. C-Space is a university-wide centre for space-related research, innovation and education, building partnerships that advance the use of space to address global scientific and societal challenges.
Lorraine's main research interests are in high-energy astrophysics, gamma-ray bursts, multi-messenger astronomy, robotic telescopes, and space instrumentation.
She is currently Chair of ESA’s Astronomy Working Group and is a member of the ESA Space Science Advisory Committee. She also serves as science advisor to the Irish delegation to the ESA Science Programme Committee and is a member of the National Advisory Committee for the European Southern Observatory. She is a former trustee of the Royal Astronomical Society and Chair of the INTEGRAL Users’ Group.
Lorraine is the Endorsing Professor for EIRSAT-1, Ireland’s first satellite, a CubeSat being developed by an interdisciplinary team of UCD students and staff under ESA’s Fly your Satellite! Programme. Her team has designed and built the satellite, and is preparing it to launch. Through its development, UCD space science and engineering students have had the opportunity to develop sought-after skills in the space industry and build Ireland's capability in space.
After submitting a proposal for the ESA Education call in March 2017, the EIRSAT-1 team pitched at a selection workshop in ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, and was selected as one of the missions that May. Two complete versions of the satellite have been built – the Environmental Qualification Model (EQM) and the Flight Model (FM). The EQM will remain in UCD to allow new students to become familiar with the hardware and for troubleshooting if problems arise with the FM in orbit.
Lorraine is also Principal Investigator of the Watcher robotic telescope at Boyden Observatory, South Africa. The research telescope is primarily designed for the rapid optical follow-up of gamma-ray bursts, and was developed by UCD in collaboration with the University of the Free State Bloemfontein, South Africa, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain and the Astronomical Institute, Czech Republic. It is the first Irish robotic telescope to be located at a high quality astronomical site and is designed primarily to study the prompt optical and afterglow emission from gamma-ray bursts, as well as other astrophysical transients.