ZTF Faces

Madeleine Ginolin

PhD student at IN2P3, France

Where was your starting point and how did you discover astronomy?

I was born in Lyon, which is the second biggest city in France (but the capital of food). Without going too much into the complexity of the French higher education system, I studied a mix of maths, physics and engineering for two years in Lyon, before moving to Paris to pursue a 4 years physics degree at ENS Paris-Saclay. My interest in astronomy was something I discovered along the path of my studies, but I realised that I wanted to pursue cosmology during a 9 months internship on dark matter. It was during Covid, so I was working remotely from my bedroom, but I still enjoyed it, which was a good clue that I should keep doing it!

How did you discover ZTF?

started looking for PhDs, and chose to come back to Lyon last year to work on cosmology with Type Ia supernovae with ZTF.

What are you playing with in the ZTF playground?

In ZTF, I investigate the link between Type Ia SNe and their environment, mainly to find ways to better their standardisation process, to ultimately get a Hubble constant unaffected by astrophysical biases. We are currently finding exciting results, which has been made possible thanks to the unprecedented statistics and quality of the ZTF sample!

Where do you want to steer your rocket in the future?

I still have two years left in my PhD, so the next step is still just at the back of my head, but I plan to continue doing research as a postdoc, while probably moving abroad for a couple of years. I would like to keep on exploring supernovae at first, because I feel there is still so much to understand! On the other hand, there are also a lot of cosmology topics that I find super interesting, and would like to maybe work on one day, like gravitational waves and multi messengers astronomy.

If you were not an astronomer, what would you be?

During my undergrad, I strongly hesitated between quantum physics and cosmology, and the tie was pretty close. The community aspect of astronomy is part of what made me choose that field, but I would have also enjoyed the experimental side of quantum physics. However, if I was not doing research, I think I would be a teacher, which is something I still get to do during my PhD!

A book that shook your worldview?

A book that shook my worldview was probably « Sophie’s world », by Jostein Gaarder. It is an introduction to philosophy but in the shape of a novel, where a teenager is guided by an old philosopher throughout the most famous philosophical movements, with a fantasy side. I read it one summer when I was around 12, and discovering so many new ways of seeing and understanding the world really made it a life changing book.

If you’ve had a bad day at work, you will….

If I had a bad day at work, I either walk the long way home to go through the big park next to campus (if it’s sunny), go to the movies (if it’s raining, or there are good movies out), or just go home early and cook a good meal.