Ulrike Kuchner

Biography
Ulrike Kuchner is an astrophysicist, artist, curator and creative producer publishing both in astronomy and in the inter- and transdisciplinary context of ArtScience. She (simultaneously) studied Astrophysics at the University of Vienna, as well as Fine Arts/Paintings at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where she was born and raised.
Today, after Masters and Ph.D. degrees have taken her to Australia, Chile, the US and Germany, she is a postdoctoral researcher in astronomy at the University of Nottingham, UK, as well as a visual artist. In her research into Astronomy, she studies how mass is assembled in the Universe and how galaxies form and evolve over their lifetime. To do this, she bridge simulations (specifically, cosmological hydrodynamical simulations) with observations of world-class telescopes.

As an artist and interdisciplinary researcher, she operates where art, culture, and science intersect, using both backgrounds to find or reject interdisciplinary answers to overarching questions. Her art often deals with the themes of humanity and imperfections in data, something we tend to strip away from science.
Ulrike also joins the creative process of other art-scientists and science-artists as curator and mentor to integrate different approaches and knowledge systems, challenging the frontiers between the two cultures without imposing a hierarchy.