Speakers

Speakers

Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, DBE, FRS, FRAS: an astrophysicist who contributed to the Nobel Prize winning work discovering the first radio pulsars. She is a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Professor Emeritus Freeman Dyson, FRS: a winner of the Lorentz Medal, the Max Planck Medal, and the Templeton Prize, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society and the American Physical Society, and a member of the US National Academy of Science. He is known for his work in quantum field theory, solid-state physics, astronomy, nuclear physics, and his thoughts on science & society.

Dr. John Grunsfeld: an astronaut with a PhD in Physics. He participated in three of the Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions, has been in a total of five space flights, and has served as NASA’s Chief Scientist, and is currently the Associate Administrator for the NASA Science Directorate.

Dr. John Johnson: an assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech, his research is in the detection and characterization of exoplanets. His work, specifically with gas giants, has been featured in popular science magazines like “New Scientist” and “Sky & Telescope.”

Dr. John Mather, NL: 2006 Nobel Prize winner for his work on cosmic microwave background radiation. He is currently senior project scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope and senior astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He is also a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, SPIE, and the American Physical Society, to name a few.

Dr. Mercedes Richards: a winner of the Fulbright Distinguished Chairs Award and the Musgrave Gold Medal.  She is currently a professor at Pennsylvania State University and President-elect of the International Astronomical Union Commission 42 on Binary Stars.  In her research, she uses tomography to model binary star systems, and her talk will focus on the many and varied interdisciplinary aspects of tomography.