Alexandra J. Tetarenko is a Canadian astrophysicist and assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Lethbridge. Her research focuses on stellar-mass black holes, relativistic jets, X-ray binaries and time-domain astronomy, with an emphasis on observations at radio and submillimetre wavelengths.
Education and career
Tetarenko was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in astrophysics from the University of Calgary, followed by a master's degree in physics in 2014 and a PhD in physics in 2018 from the University of Alberta. Her doctoral thesis examined the physics of relativistic jets in X-ray binaries.
After completing her doctorate, Tetarenko worked at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii as an East Asian Observatory Fellow. From 2021 to 2023, she was an Einstein Fellow at Texas Tech University through the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program. She joined the University of Lethbridge as an assistant professor in 2023.
Research
Tetarenko studies the relationship between matter accreting onto stellar-mass black holes and the relativistic jets produced by these systems. Her work uses observations across multiple wavelengths, particularly radio and submillimetre observations, together with computational and statistical methods.
Her doctoral research examined relativistic jets in X-ray binaries. She was also involved in research associated with the detection of an astrophysical neutrino event, contributing radio observations used in the analysis.
Awards and honours
In 2019, Tetarenko received the J. S. Plaskett Medal from the Canadian Astronomical Society for her doctoral thesis on relativistic jets in X-ray binaries.
In 2021, she was selected as an Einstein Fellow through the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program for research on black holes and their explosive outflows.
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