It’s World Space Week, so we’re celebrating the people, ideas and opportunities that connect us to space, including the space careers happening right here in the North East.
When we launched Space Zone back in 2019, we wanted to show that a career in space isn’t just something you had to leave home for to pursue. The North East is home to universities, research organisations and businesses working across a wide range of space-related fields, with many different routes into the industry.
As part of Space Zone, we created a series of career totems showcasing real people and the different paths they had taken into the world of space. They were designed to show young visitors and their families that there are real careers behind the science they were exploring, and that there are lots of different ways to work in the space sector. From astrophysics and planetary science to space law and scientific research, they highlighted just how varied a space career can be.
For World Space Week, we’ve been looking back at four of those people to see where their careers have taken them since we first featured them at Life seven years ago.
Chris Toth – dark matter research
Chris Toth now works as a Facility Scientist at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Boulby Underground Laboratory in North Yorkshire.
Seven years ago, when we spoke to Chris for our Space Zone career totems, he was researching dark matter at Boulby. Today, he specialises in astroparticle physics experiments and works 1.1km underground in an active mine. His role involves overseeing, installing, operating and decommissioning collaborative projects across a range of scientific disciplines.
Chris has continued his work in dark matter research and, for the past year, has been conducting research and development with the University of Birmingham towards building the DarkSPHERE dark matter detector. Once operational, DarkSPHERE will be used to search for low-mass dark matter particles.
His route into research wasn’t entirely conventional. After studying physics, Chris worked in teaching at secondary school and college before becoming a forklift truck driver while looking for new opportunities. As it turned out, his experience helped him secure an opportunity at Boulby, where he was initially taken on by the DRIFT dark matter search experiment and employed by the laboratory a year later.
Alexandra Taylor – space law
Alexandra Taylor has continued to build her career in space law at Northumbria University. When we originally spoke to her, she was investigating space law and developing a framework for criminal justice in space.
Since then, Alexandra graduated with her PhD in space law from Northumbria Law School in July 2026. She is now an Associate Lecturer at Northumbria Law School and a research associate on a collaborative project between Northumbria University and Police AI, the new national centre dedicated to the responsible development of AI in policing.
Her research focuses on illegality in outer space and embedding responsible research ethics into long-duration spaceflight. In October, she will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at Northumbria Law School, where she will continue to develop and disseminate her doctoral research for publication.
Ramin Lolachi – planetary science at NASA
Ramin Lolachi is now an Assistant Research Scientist for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in the US.
When we first spoke to Ramin, his research was focused on the atmosphere of Mars, carrying out research that could help support future crewed missions to the Red Planet. Since then, his work has expanded across the Moon, Mars and asteroids.
Much of Ramin’s current research focuses on using observations and computer simulations to study how light interacts with dust on airless bodies such as the Moon and asteroids. On the Moon, he studies dust raised from the surface by meteoroid impacts, electrostatic lofting and exploration activities. This work can help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of the Moon’s surface, as well as phenomena such as Lunar Horizon Glow, while also helping us understand the challenges lunar dust could pose for future robotic and human exploration.
Ramin has also been part of the investigation team for NASA’s DART mission, the world’s first planetary defence mission. He has modelled how light scatters from material ejected during the asteroid impact, helping scientists estimate how much material was thrown out and understand how momentum was transferred during the impact.
His research on Mars has continued too. Using data from the Mars Climate Sounder aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Ramin studies the distribution of water vapour in the Martian atmosphere. His work also looks at how dust and water-ice particles interact with light, helping scientists investigate the current state of Mars’ atmosphere and how it has changed from a world that may once have had lakes and oceans to the desert planet we see today.
Anna Genina – exploring galaxy formation
After completing her PhD at Durham University in 2020, Anna Genina spent five years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, where she worked extensively with cosmological simulations of galaxy formation.
Seven years ago, when we spoke to Anna, her research focused on using dwarf galaxies to investigate dark matter. Since then, her work has expanded into studying how galaxies form and evolve, using computer simulations and observations from telescopes such as LSST and Euclid.
She is now based at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, where she studies the faint outer regions of galaxies, known as stellar haloes. By comparing observations with computer simulations, Anna investigates how galaxies have formed and changed over time, including how many mergers they have experienced.
This work could also help scientists narrow down the nature of dark matter and dark energy, two of the biggest unanswered questions in astronomy.
Ruusa-Magano David – GIS and remote sensing
When we first featured Ruusa-Magano David, she was working in the Geography Department at Durham University, using satellite data to understand the effects of human activities on plants in the savanna regions of Namibia.
Ruusa is now a Lecturer in GIS and Remote Sensing at Keele University, where she combines satellite data from space with observations collected in the field to study forest ecosystems and how they are changing.
Her current research explores how forests respond to environmental change, including the impacts of wildfire and climate change. By bringing together satellite observations and on-the-ground data, her work helps us better understand how ecosystems are changing over time.
Inspired to find out where your own interest in space could take you? Come and explore Space Zone on your next visit to Life. From planets and the Solar System to space exploration and the technology that helps us understand our Universe, there’s plenty to discover – and who knows where it might lead?