AN American has been jailed after being found guilty of travelling to the UK to stalk a famous Oxfordshire YouTuber and researcher.

Augustine Lopez, 47, was found guilty of stalking between February 12 and March 28 of astrophysicist Dr Rebecca Smethurst – known online as Dr Becky.

The American travelled from Florida to London Heathrow in February last year without booking a hotel with, what the prosecution said, was the ‘sole purpose’ of seeing Dr Smethurst.

READ MORE: Man guilty of raping 15-year-old girl at house party

He also sent his luggage to Dr Smethurst’s place of work and camped outside despite never having met or spoken to her.

A jury at Oxford Crown Court found Lopez, of Orange County, Florida, guilty and he was jailed for 18 weeks.

Dr Smethurst works as a junior research fellow at the University of Oxford.

Wanting to ‘open up the world of astrophysics’ and promote it online, she made various social media accounts five years ago.

She has since amassed more than 126k followers on Instagram, 723k followers on YouTube and over 50k followers on Twitter/X after.

READ MORE: Trial set after defendant denies sexually abusing teenage boy, 14

In 2020, the 33-year-old won the Mary Somerville Medal and Prize for the work on her YouTube channel.

It is believed Lopez was one of these followers and had an ‘obsession’ with her.

Lopez was also found guilty of possession of a prohibited weapon after bringing a can of ‘mace’ pepper spray, a prohibited weapon, into the UK.