Catherine Heymans

Catherine Heymans is a British astrophysicist researcher, lecturer and academic based at the University of Edinburgh.

Heymans received a first class Masters in Physics at University of Edinburgh in 2000. In 2003 she received her PhD from University of Oxford. She won a series of prestigious fellowships at Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Institut d'astrophysique de Paris and University of Edinburgh. In 2009 she was awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council and has since been made a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh.

Heymans is best known for her work on using the technique of cosmic Weak gravitational lensing to learn more about the Universe. She led the Shear Testing Programme STEP1 competitionand co-leads the lensing collaboration of the Canada France Hawaii Legacy Survey: CFHTLenS.