Hannah Rana

Hannah Rana is a BHEX Fellow and Clay Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University. Her work focuses on black hole detection, where she works at the intersection of black hole physics and detection instrumentation for ground and space very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). Hannah uses GRMHD simulations to study features of the black hole photon ring to be resolved by the BHEX mission and is the Cryogenics Co-Lead for the BHEX mission. Hannah has worked in leading instrument science roles on 6 astronomy space missions to date. She completed her D.Phil. at the University of Oxford and has previously held appointments at Harvard, NASA, ESA, Caltech, CERN, and as a founding member of Neutron Star Systems, an electric propulsion space startup. She is passionate about science policy, holds committee positions at the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and is a committed science communicator and educator.

D.Phil. University of Oxford