Beth Willman is an American astronomer who is the Executive Officer of the LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) Corporation, [1] an astronomical organization notable for its support of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. She was previously the deputy director of the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) and an associate professor of astronomy at Haverford College.
Beth Willman received her B.A. in astrophysics at Columbia University. She later received a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Washington. Beth Willman has also been a James Arthur Fellow at the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, and a Clay Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Beth mainly focuses her research on cosmology. Her specialty is investigating the least luminous galaxies in our known Universe. [2] [3] The galaxy Willman 1, which she discovered during her postdoc, is named after her. [4]
Sandra Moore Faber is an American astrophysicist known for her research on the evolution of galaxies. She is the University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and works at the Lick Observatory. She has made discoveries linking the brightness of galaxies to the speed of stars within them and was the co-discoverer of the Faber–Jackson relation. Faber was also instrumental in designing the Keck telescopes in Hawaii.
Margaret J. Geller is an American astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Her work has included pioneering maps of the nearby universe, studies of the relationship between galaxies and their environment, and the development and application of methods for measuring the distribution of matter in the universe.
Robert P. Kirshner is an American astronomer, Chief Program Officer for Science for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Clownes Research Professor of Science at Harvard University. Kirshner has worked in several areas of astronomy including the physics of supernovae, supernova remnants, the large-scale structure of the cosmos, and the use of supernovae to measure the expansion of the universe.
Lisa Jennifer Kewley is an Australian Astrophysicist and current Director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Previously, Kewley was Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3-D and ARC Laureate Fellow at the Australian National University College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, where she was also a Professor. Specialising in galaxy evolution, she won the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 2005 for her studies of oxygen in galaxies, and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 2008. In 2014 she was elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2020 she received the James Craig Watson Medal. In 2021 she was elected as an international member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2022 she became the first female director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
George Petros Efstathiou is a British astrophysicist who is Professor of Astrophysics (1909) at the University of Cambridge and was the first Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge from 2008 to 2016. He was previously Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford.
Wendy Laurel Freedman is a Canadian-American astronomer, best known for her measurement of the Hubble constant, and as director of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, and Las Campanas, Chile. She is now the John & Marion Sullivan University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. Her principal research interests are in observational cosmology, focusing on measuring both the current and past expansion rates of the universe, and on characterizing the nature of dark energy.
Alice Eve Shapley is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. She was one of the discoverers of the spiral galaxy BX442. Through her time at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) she has taught Nature of the Universe, Black Holes and Cosmic Catastrophes,Cosmology: Our Changing Concepts of the Universe, Galaxies, Scientific Writing, AGNs, Galaxies, *and* Writing, and The Formation and Evolution of Galaxies and the IGM. Shapley has committed herself too over a two decades of research and publication in the interest of physics and astronomy.
Beth A. Brown was a NASA astrophysicist with a research focus on X-ray observations of elliptical galaxies and black holes. She earned a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Michigan in 1998, becoming the first African-American woman to do so.
Warrick John Couch is an Australian professional astronomer. He is currently a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. He was previously the Director of Australia's largest optical observatory, the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO). He was also the President of the Australian Institute of Physics (2015–2017), and a non-executive director on the Board of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization. He was a founding non-executive director of Astronomy Australia Limited.
Amanda Elaine Bauer is an American professional astronomer and science communicator. She is the Deputy Director and Head of Science and Education at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. She was previously based in Tucson, Arizona, working as Head of Education and Public Outreach at the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. From 2013 to 2016 she was a Research Astronomer at the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO). Her principal field of research concerns how galaxies form, how they create new stars, and particularly why they suddenly stop creating new stars.
Debra Meloy Elmegreen is an American astronomer. She was the first woman to graduate from Princeton University with a degree in astrophysics, and she was the first female post-doctoral researcher at the Carnegie Observatories.
Rachel Mandelbaum is a professor of astrophysics at Carnegie Mellon University, studying cosmology and galactic evolution with a focus on dark matter and dark energy. Much of her work has used the phenomenon of gravitational lensing of galaxies and she has made significant improvements in the calibration of lensing parameters.
Smadar Naoz is an Israeli-American astrophysicist, and was the 2015 winner of the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy for her scientific contributions to the fields of cosmology and planetary dynamics.
Vassiliki Kalogera is a Greek astrophysicist. She is a professor at Northwestern University and the Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). She is a leading member of the LIGO Collaboration that observed gravitational waves in 2015.
Karen Masters is an Astrophysicist and Associate Professor of Astrophysics in Haverford College, Pennsylvania exploring galaxy formation. She is also the project scientist for the citizen science project Galaxy Zoo, and uses the classifications to study the evolution of galaxies.
Joanna Dunkley is a British astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at Princeton University. She works on the origin of the Universe and the Cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, the Simons Observatory and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).
Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil, Ph.D., is a Turkish astrophysicist, and Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College. She formerly served as a National Science Foundation (NSF) and Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago. Her research led to a discovery of an extremely rare galaxy with a unique double-ringed elliptical structure, which is now commonly referred to as Burcin's Galaxy. She was also a 2018 TED Fellow, and a 2020 TED Senior Fellow.
Nia Imara is an American astrophysicist, artist, and activist. Imara's scientific work deals with galactic mass, star formation, and exoplanet detection. Imara was the first African-American woman to earn a PhD in astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley and was the inaugural postdoctoral fellow in the Future Faculty Leaders program at Harvard University. In 2020, Imara joined the University of California, Santa Cruz as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy.
Dr. Alexey Vikhlinin is a Russian-American astrophysicist notable for achievements in the astrophysics of high energy phenomenon, namely galaxy cluster cosmology and the design of space-based X-ray observatories. He is currently a senior astrophysicist and deputy associate director of the High Energy Astrophysics Division at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the Science and Technology Definition Team (STDT) Community Co-Chair for the Lynx X-ray Observatory, a NASA-funded Large Mission Concept Study under consideration by the 2020 Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Anna Elisabeth Krause is a German-American astronomer and assistant professor of physics at the University of Arizona.