Wanda Diaz-Merced and the music of the cosmos.
Wanda Diaz-Merced is an astrophysicist who studies the universe through sounds.
Ever since she was a child in her native Puerto Rico, Wanda dreamed of becoming a scientist. At the age of 20, however, a major obstacle stood in her way: she became progressively blind due to a degenerative disease.
At that moment, Wanda, who was studying Physics at the University of Puerto Rico, could have stopped and given up, but instead, she decided to pursue her dream by finding a way to realise what she had always wanted.
He discovered that he could 'translate' data sets from the cosmos into sounds and listen to them, instead of analysing them through sight.
Thus, with the support of a team of computer scientists, the "sonification', an application that allows Wanda and other blind or visually impaired scientists to 'listen' to stars in order to reconstruct their configurations from seemingly random astrophysical data.
Thanks to her commitment and determination, Wanda Diaz-Merced managed to get her doctorate in Glasgow and now works at the Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town, South Africa. She also joined the research team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre.
Her approach to reading astrophysical data through sound has allowed her to gain a new and different perspective: she can hear things that others cannot see, gaining new knowledge in her field of research and also showing other astrophysicists how to look for different ways to read data.
Her experience in Wanda's words: "I was able to access data and today I am able to study physics at the level of the best astrophysicists. And what people have been able to do for hundreds of years, mainly through sight, I now do using sound".
Perhaps the ultimate message could be that if we only see the universe with our eyes, our perception may be very limited indeed.
Dr. Carmelo Chines
Direttore responsabile
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