Marina Rejkuba: biography
Last update: September 2017
I was born in Zagreb, Croatia, and I lived there until graduating from the
Classical
Gymnasium.
For the first year of university
I moved to nearby Slovenia in 1991, where I started the physics study
at the University of Ljubljana.
Returning to Zagreb in 1992 I continued from the second year
the studies at the
University of Zagreb, at the
Physics Faculty.
During that time I became interested in astronomy, and I took all courses
in astronomy and astrophysics offered at the University. Furthermore I gained
some more practical experience through
Visnjan Observatory, which then
led me to Italy for my undergraduate thesis work.
I spent between 1996-1998 about two and a half years at the
Asiago Observatory, in Italy,
observing and studying mostly symbiotic variables, a sub-class of
cataclysmic variable stars. Having graduated in Physics from the University
of Zagreb in 1998, I moved to Santiago, Chile, for the postgraduate study in
physics, specializing in astrophysics.
I obtained the PhD in Physics at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in 2002.
Between 2000-2002, I spent two years as an ESO PhD Student in Garching,
Germany. I liked it so much that I returned there as an ESO fellow in the fall of 2002.
During my Fellowship in ESO, Garching, I went frequently to Paranal and supported Science
Operations on the VLT, supporting day time operations and running the instruments on UT2.
I joined the ESO User Support Departmnet (USD) in March 2005.
My duties in USD included support for service mode users of
FORS1/FORS2,
VIMOS,
FLAMES,
and
VIRCAM
instruments, contributions to the respective Instrument Operations Teams,
and active participation in the ESO Survey Team, which oversees the implementation,
execution and deliverables from
large Public
Survey observing programmes at ESO.
In 2008 I became the Project Scientist responsible for the requirements and evolution of
the observation handling tools (OHS). We have developed a new generation of
Phase 2 Preparation
Tool version 3 (P2PP3) used by the PIs or their Phase 2 delegates to prepare
their observations, as well as the Observation Tool version 3 (OT3) used by the observatory
staff to review and execute service mode observations. Originally these tools were
developed for imaging public surveys that started in
2010 on VISTA and 2011 on VST, but were then extended for use on all Paranal telescopes in 2012.
A new observations execution reporting tool - the so called (Garching) Night Log Tool or
gNLT, deployed in 2011, facilitates and
automatizes both harvesting information on the observations' execution and reporting for the users.
In 2014 I initiated a new project that is bringing further improvements and evolving the
observation preparation and execution tools, by adding new functionalities and employing
modern technological solutions.
In October 2016 the project achieved its first milestone with the deployment of the
web-based phase 2 preparation tool along with a new visitor Observing Tool (so-called vOT4).
In April 2013 I became a Junior Principal Investigator at the Excellence Cluster
Universe at the Garching Research Campus.
Between 2012-2015 I was the line manager for the User Support Astronomers Group (USG) in USD
and within this role I was responsible
to optimize resources, distribute the day-to-day duties and supervise the daily
support work of the USG members. In 2015 I took up the responsibility for the entire department
as the USD head, leading the User Support astronomers and Operations Support Groups.