Antonia Varela Pérez has been appointed by the Cabildo of Tenerife, at the proposal of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), as the new director of the Museum of Science and the Cosmos. Varela will take over from Héctor Socas Navarro, also a researcher at the IAC, who has been in charge of the Museum since 2019.

Varela is a researcher at the IAC and a member of the IAC's Sky Quality Group for the Characterisation of the Canary Observatories and the Starburst Formation Group. She is also managing director of the Starlight Foundation and president of BPW Canarias, as well as a PhD in Astrophysics and part of the IAC staff as a Senior Engineer. She developed her doctoral thesis in the field of Extragalactic Astrophysics (Bulbs of Galaxies) at the IAC, which she completed in part at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris.

He has more than a hundred contributions to conferences and publications in scientific journals, including a recent article in the prestigious journal Science about light pollution and its consequences. She has also worked prominently in the selection of sites for large telescopes and has been a lecturer in astronomy for two decades at the University for Adults and Senior Citizens of the University of La Laguna. Varela has received several awards in recognition of her research career and her defence of the sky. Recently, she was awarded the 'Mujer Ciencia e Innovación' prize by the magazine Más Mujer to the most relevant Canarian women of the year.

Public lecture at the MCC

This Friday, 22 December, at 18:00, at the Museum of Science and the Cosmos, Héctor Socas Navarro will give a public lecture entitled "30 years of cosmos science" to close the year 2023, in which the museum has completed three decades. The event will review the most important advances made in astrophysics and cosmology since the museum opened.