Sera Markoff (https://www.seramarkoff.com) is a professor of theoretical astrophysics and astroparticle physics at the University of Amsterdam. Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, she was educated in the US (SB Physics from MIT, MSc/PhD in Theoretical Astrophysics from the University of Arizona) then bounced back and forth across the pond, taking research fellowships first to the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, and then back to MIT in the US. She joined the faculty in Amsterdam in 2006, where she runs her research group and helped establish the Gravitation and AstroParticle Physics Amsterdam (GRAPPA) centre of excellence in 2012.

Sera's research focuses on the extreme physics occurring around compact objects like black holes, and the role black holes play in the Universe. She has won numerous awards and recognitions, including the top Dutch Research Council personal career grants VIDI and VICI, and was named Fellow of the American Physical Society and member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences. As part of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHTC), where she currently serves on its Science Board, she helped present the first image of a black hole to the world in 2019, and shared in the Bruno Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society and the Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics. Sera has also won several awards for her community outreach. Most recently she is working towards the first movies of black holes, including via an expansion project of the EHT in Namibia, the Africa Millimetre Telescope, funded by a European Research Council Synergy Grant, “Blackholistic”.