Dr Fiona Panther is an astrophysicist, statistician, and mother (not always in that order). She grew up in Northumberland, in the North East of England, and emigrated to New Zealand with her family in her teens.

Dr Panther received her PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from the Australian National University, where she spent three years at Mt Stromlo Observatory studying the origin of antimatter in our Galaxy. Following her PhD, she worked at UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy, teaching physics and researching gamma-ray emission from exploding stars. She joined the University of Western Australia in 2020 to search for gravitational waves – ripples in spacetime created by merging black holes and neutron stars. She was awarded a Forrest Fellowship in 2022. Her research primarily focuses on revealing the beating hearts of newly formed neutron stars, using a variety of statistics techniques that can be applied to other problems to demystify our world and Universe.