PEOPLE: Cynthia Umuhire Bring Rwanda in Astronomy And Space Sciences

Ange Cynthia Umuhire is a Space Science Analyst at the Rwanda Space Agency. She is in her second year of a three-year program pursuing a PhD in Astronomy and Space Sciences at the University of Rwanda’s College of Science and Technology (UR-CST). Mawazo Learning Exchange

Ange holds an MSc in Physics from Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) in Uganda, and a BSc in Physics (Material Sciences) from UR-CST where she studied a combination of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics at the advanced level.

She has attended and participated in different national and international conferences and workshops, including workshops in Ethiopia, Italy, and Uganda from 2017 until 2019. At the end of 2019, she trained for three months at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA-GSFC) in the U.S.A., in the Heliophysics Science Division, where scientists are developing models, spacecraft missions, instruments, and systems to manage and disseminate heliophysical data.

Research & Work

Ange’s research study focuses on geo-effective phenomena from the Sun’s corona, the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere. She authored a paper for the Solar Physics Journal,High-Frequency “Properties of High-Frequency Type II Solar Radio Bursts and their relation to theHigh-Frequency associated Coronal Mass Ejections”, and co-authored “The shock driving capability of a CME inferred from multi-wavelengths observations” submitted in the Sun and Geosphere Journal.

Rwandan science Team

As the first student to be enrolled in the field of astronomy and space sciences in Rwanda, her research is being used in a newly established Rwanda Space Agency (RSA). As a space science analyst in the Earth and Space science department, she is using the knowledge she is acquiring to solve challenges related to weather and climate predictions for disaster management, improving agricultural yields for food security, predicting pandemics, and improving GPS functions and operations used by companies and institutions.