Michelle is currently at Dartmouth College in the USA as part of the Stobie-SALT Fellowship programme, she started her PhD in September 2005.

Michelle did her Master's degree through the NASSP programme at UCT and her thesis was on extragalactic astronomy. At the moment she is completing coursework, but she will probably stay in the extragalactic field.

Michelle is 29 and likes long walks on the beach.

While doing her undergraduate studies in Physics/Mathematics at Potchefstroom University, Ilani fell hook, line and sinker in love with Astronomy. She is currently busy with her master's thesis entitled "Analysis and interpretation of astrophysical, optical emission-line spectra" under supervision of Prof. Johan van der Walt. Ilani's current research consists mainly of optical spectroscopy and nebular analysis on star formation regions. Ilani also attended the Vatican Observatory Summer School 2005, which introduced her to the very interesting and timely topic of Astrobiology.

In January 2006, Ilani will trade the North-West province of South Africa for the North-west of England when she will take up the Stobie-SALT Scholarship for PhD study at the University of Central Lancashire.

Ilani's other (not-so-academic) interests include fly-fishing and playing squash.

Vanessa is doing a PhD in Astronomy at the University of Southampton, under the supervision of Prof. Malcolm Coe. At the moment She's working on X-ray binaries, especially those in our neighbouring galaxy the Small Magellanic Cloud. Vanessa also studies magnetic fields and accretion processes onto neutron stars.

Retha is a PhD student in the astronomy group at the University of Southampton, UK. She is doing an observational study of the evolution of cataclysmic variable stars. Retha's supervisors are Christian Knigge (Southampton) and Darragh O'Donoghue.