Manami Sasaki
"Do what you are interested in because that’s what you do best, and enjoy what you do"
Life
My name is Manami Sasaki and I am a professor of Multi-wavelength Astronomy at the Dr Karl Remeis Observatory of the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg. I am originally from Japan and grew up in Germany. I have always been interested in space since my early childhood. I carry out observations and studies of galaxies and their components to improve our understanding of the galactic matter cycle from the stellar death to the new generation of stars and thus the evolution of galaxies in our Universe.
Science
I study stellar endpoints like white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes, or supernova remnants (SNRs), as well as the interstellar medium (ISM) in nearby galaxies. Based on the observational studies of X-ray emission of these sources I aim to obtain a more complete picture of the objects and the physical processes. I am a senior member of the eROSITA consortium and the chairperson of the diffuse emission/ISM/SNR working group.
The figure taken from the EDR paper (Sasaki et al.) shows the images of the most active part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is the largest and the clostest star-forming satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, observed in X-rays with eROSITA (left) and in radio (right). Position of SNRs are marked.
Conclusion
I am mother of two children and enjoy spending time with my family. In my free time I love playing piano.
When I was a student, I have actually thought about doing something else many times (more useful, like applied physics or medical sciences). However, in the end I decided to stick to my dreams. My advice to young scientists would be: do what you are interested in because that’s what you do best, and enjoy what you do.
