I am from Germany and studied at the University of Potsdam, where I obtained my Bachelor and Master of Education degree, with the intention to become a teacher of Physics and English. I did my Bachelor thesis project at the Astrophysical Institute of Potsdam (AIP), where I studied high-redshift galaxies. But studying the Sun would be much cooler, I thought. During my Masters, I took one year off and worked as a research assistant at Imperial College London and investigated solar irradiation variability in the UV, where I realised that research in solar physics is what I really want to do. During the course of writing my Masters thesis, on chromospheric activity indices in H-alpha for the Sun-as-a-star, also at the AIP, this had become even clearer. I then applied for a PhD project in numerical simulations of the Sun with Dr Sergiy Shelyag, and I could not have asked for a better project.

Email: linh.l.phuong@northumbria.ac.uk