Catherine C. Espaillat is an American astronomer whose research is focused on the formation of planets, including the study of protoplanetary disks and young stellar objects. [1] [2] She is an associate professor of astronomy at Boston University, where she directs the Institute for Astrophysical Research. [3]
Espaillat comes from a working-class immigrant family; [4] her parents emigrated to the US from the Dominican Republic. [5] She was interested in astronomy since childhood, but entered Columbia University intending to become a physician; her focus changed to a career in astronomy after taking an introductory course in the subject as a sophomore. [4] After graduating in 2003 with a degree in astronomy, she went to the University of Michigan for graduate study, earned a master's degree there in 2005, and completed her Ph.D. in 2009, [6] under the supervision of Nuria Calvet. [7]
She became a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics from 2009 to 2013, supported by the National Science Foundation and by a NASA Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowship. Next, she joined the Boston University Department of Astronomy as an assistant professor in 2013. [6] She was promoted to associate professor in 2020. [6] [8]
Espaillat is also the director of the League of Underrepresented Minoritized Astronomers (LUMA), a peer mentoring community for women from underrepresented groups in astronomy and related fields, [9] which she founded in 2015. [10]
Espaillat was named as a Sloan Research Fellow and as a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. In 2022, the American Association for the Advancement of Science named Espaillat as an AAAS Fellow. [11]
She was a keynote speaker at the 2019 annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society. [4]
Eleanor Margaret Burbidge, FRS (née Peachey; 12 August 1919 – 5 April 2020) was a British-American observational astronomer and astrophysicist. In the 1950s, she was one of the founders of stellar nucleosynthesis and was first author of the influential B2FH paper. During the 1960s and 1970s she worked on galaxy rotation curves and quasars, discovering the most distant astronomical object then known. In the 1980s and 1990s she helped develop and utilise the Faint Object Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope. Burbidge was also well known for her work opposing discrimination against women in astronomy.
Virginia Louise Trimble is an American astronomer specializing in the structure and evolution of stars and galaxies, and the history of astronomy. She has published more than 600 works in Astrophysics, and dozens of other works in the history of other sciences. She is famous for an annual review of astronomy and astrophysics research that was published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and often gives summary reviews at astrophysical conferences. In 2018, she was elected a Patron of the American Astronomical Society, for her many years of intellectual, organizational, and financial contributions to the society.
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.
Kristen Sellgren is an American retired astronomer and Professor Emerita at the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, Ohio State University. She won the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 1990. She is the founder of American Astronomical Society's Committee for Sexual-Orientation & Gender Minorities in Astronomy (SGMA).
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.
Stefi Baum is an American astronomer. The American Astronomical Society honored her work by awarding her the Annie J. Cannon Prize in 1993. Baum helped to develop the Hubble Space Telescope and, starting in 2004, was the director of Rochester Institute of Technology’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science.
Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil is a Turkish-American 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.
Jarita Charmian Holbrook is an American astronomer and associate professor of physics at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) where they are principal investigator of the Astronomy & Society group. Holbrook's work examines the relationship between humans and the night sky, and they have produced scientific publications on cultural astronomy, starburst galaxies, and star formation regions.
Marcia Jean Rieke is an American astronomer. She is a Regents' Professor of Astronomy and associate department head at the University of Arizona. Rieke is the Principal Investigator on the near-infrared camera (NIRCam) for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). She has also served as the deputy-Principal Investigator on the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and as the co-investigator for the multiband imaging photometer on the Spitzer Space Telescope, where she also acted as an outreach coordinator and a member of the Science Working Group. Rieke was also involved with several infrared ground-based observatories, including the MMT Observatory in Arizona. She was vice chair for Program Prioritization of the Astro2010 Decadal Survey Committee, "New Worlds, New Horizons". Marcia Rieke is considered by many to be one of the "founding mothers" of infrared astronomy, along with Judith Pipher.
Keivan Guadalupe Stassun is an American physicist and astronomer in the field of exoplanets. He is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University and an adjunct professor at Fisk University, institutions at which he oversees and co-directs the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-Ph.D Bridge Program. Stassun has been an activist promoting the integration of underrepresented groups in the fields of STEM, especially math and science through research, outreach and teaching.
Dara J. Norman is an astronomer and the deputy director of the Community Science and Data Center at the National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) in Tucson, Arizona. She is also the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Diversity Advocate at NOAO. Her research centers on the influence of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) on the evolution of galaxies. In 2020, she was inducted into the inaugural cohort of American Astronomical Society Fellows in recognition of her leadership and achievements.
Linda Siobhan Sparke is a British astronomer known for her research on the structure and dynamics of galaxies. She is a professor emerita of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Explorers Program Scientist in the NASA Astrophysics Division.
Jacqueline K. (Jackie) Faherty is an American astronomer specializing in infrared astronomy and the observation of nearby stars and brown dwarfs, and known for her public outreach in space science. She works at the American Museum of Natural History as a senior scientist in the museum's Department of Astrophysics and a senior education manager in the Department of Education.
Ilaria Pascucci is an Italian-American astrophysicist and planetary scientist known for her research on exoplanets, protoplanets, the formation of planets, and protoplanetary disks, using a combination of theory, simulation, and observation. Pascucci is a professor and associate department head in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.
Elizabeth Lyon Blanton is an American astronomer whose research combines observations of galaxy clusters on a broad range of spectra including radio astronomy, X-ray astronomy, infrared astronomy, and visible-light astronomy. She is an associate professor of astronomy at Boston University, where she directs the Institute for Astrophysical Research.
Linda May French is an American astronomer specializing in the physical properties of asteroids and comets, including their shapes and surfaces. She is also interested in astronomy education and in the history of astronomy, particularly focusing on the life of John Goodricke, an 18th-century deaf British amateur astronomer. She is a professor of physics at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Eileen Dolores Friel is an American astronomer specializing in the metallicity of star clusters. She is a former director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory and Lowell Observatory, and a professor emeritus of astronomy at Indiana University.
Karen Beth Shipley Bjorkman is an American astronomer whose research applies polarimetry to the study of massive stars and circumstellar discs. She is Distinguished University Professor and Helen Luedtke Brooks Endowed Professor in Astronomy at the University of Toledo, and the university's provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
Tereasa Gail Brainerd is an American astronomer whose interests include galaxy clusters, satellite galaxies, and gravitational lensing. Educated in Canada and the US, she works in the US as a professor of astronomy at Boston University.
Marla C. Geha is an American astronomer who specializes in dwarf galaxies, and especially the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. She is a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University, and director of telescope resources for Yale.