Emma Bunce

Bunce grew up in Worthing.[4] In 1989 she watched the Horizon BBC documentary on Neptune with images taken by Voyager 2 and was inspired to become a space scientist.[5]

She was educated at Davison High School (a C of E girls school) and Worthing College (a sixth form college), where she graduated in 1994.[4] She studied physics with space science at the University of Leicester and earned her Master of Physics (MPhys) degree in 1998.[4]

In 1998 Bunce began her doctoral training with Stan Cowley, investigating the magnetosphere of Jupiter.[4] Her thesis, Large-scale current systems in the Jovian Magnetosphere, looked at the radial current systems of the middle magnetosphere of Jupiter.[6] She used data from Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and Ulysses.[7] The interaction between Jupiter and the surrounding plasma environment is influenced by the magnetic field. On Jupiter, the plasma is mainly produced in the volcanic moon Io.[7]

After her graduate studies, Bunce worked as a postdoctoral researcher investigating the Kronian magnetosphere of Saturn in preparation for Cassini–Huygens.[7] In 2003 Bunce was awarded a Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council fellowship to study the magnetosphere of Saturn.[4] She continued to study Jupiter's polar auroral emissions.[8][9] She was appointed to the faculty at the University of Leicester in 2005.[4]

Bunce was part of the Cassini–Huygens magnetometer team.[10] She was the first to analyse the UV aurorae of Saturn using the Hubble Space Telescope.[11][12] The magnetosphere of Saturn rotates rapidly and plasma is produced via sputter of the icy moons.[4] She monitored the magnetospheric currents of Saturn in situ, identifying that there was a connection between the auroral oval and upward-directed field-aligned currents that flow near open and closed field lines.[12] She observed the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere of Saturn.[13] In 2009 she was elected to the Royal Astronomical Society Council[14] and delivered the society's Harold Jeffreys Lecture.[13] She discussed her work Jupiter-like aurorae found on saturn.[15]

She was promoted to reader in 2009 and professor in 2013.[4] She organised a celebration of ten years of Cassini–Huygens in 2014.[16] She is the Principal Investigator of the Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (MIXS) instrument.[17][18][19][20] MIXS was built in Leicester, launched in 2015 and will travel to Mercury.[21][22] She delivered the 2016 National Space Academy keynote lecture.[23] She is the principal investigator on the European Space Agency BepiColombo mission (to Mercury) and deputy lead on the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer.[24] BepiColombo will help to explain some of the mysteries of Mercury, including finding volatile sulphur and potassium.[25][26] She contributed to the book Mathematical Methods for the Physical Sciences: A University Level Introduction in 2018.[27]

Bunce was elected President of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2019; she began her term on 26 June 2020[2] and will serve for two years.[3]