IMAGINATION IN SERVICE TO SOCIETY AWARDEE
SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE (STScI)
for allowing us, through stunning images and analyses, to feel like fellow explorers of the universe.
Established in 1981, STScI has helped guide the most famous observatory in history, the Hubble Space Telescope. Since its launch in 1990, the institute has performed the science operations for Hubble.
Left: The Hubble Space Telescope’s First Observation of Jupiter taken in green light at 1:14 a.m., 3/11/1991
Right: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope revisited Jupiter this year capturing both sides of the planet
Left: The Penguin and the Egg, are in a near-and mid-infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope
Right: The Serpens Nebula from the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope
The STScI staff conducts world-class scientific research, managing the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST), curating and disseminating data from over 20 astronomical missions; and bringing science to the world through internationally recognized news, education, and public outreach programs. The Institute values its diverse workforce and civility in the workplace and seeks to be an example for others to follow.
The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble & Webb Project Offices and Communications Teams work with the Science Mission Directorate Astrophysics Division to maintain overall science policy for the mission and provide governance. The projects are responsible for the overall management of the science programs, science operations, and mission operations,
and have delegated to STScI some of those responsibilities, including science operations for HST and JWST, and flight operations for JWST.
STScI conducts science and flight operations for NASA’s flagship astronomical observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and science operations for both the iconic Hubble Space Telescope and the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Our fourth mission, the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST), delivers data and enables advancement from these and dozens of other facilities. She will also oversee the development of concepts for a next-generation astrophysics flagship mission known as the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
As director, Dr. Lotz works closely with government, corporate, academic, international, and public partners to help humanity explore the wonders of the universe with advanced space telescopes and their data archives.
Before this, Dr. Lotz was an associate astronomer with tenure at STScI. She served in a variety of roles and contributed to several large research projects. From 2013 to 2018, she contributed to the institute’s science mission office, where she worked on science policies and supported the time allocation committee for the Hubble Space Telescope. From 2012 to 2016 she led Frontier Fields, a large Hubble program that took very deep images of six galaxy clusters to reveal very distant galaxies and help reconstruct the history of the universe. From 2010 to 2013, she contributed to JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) team. During this period, she simultaneously served as a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University. She also supervised two postdoctoral scholars, three PhD thesis students, and eight additional students.
From 2005 to 2010, she was a Leo Goldberg Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. She started her career as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Santa Cruz, where she used the W. M. Keck Observatory and Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to study galaxy mergers.
Hallmarks of Dr. Lotz’s career are her contributions to and leadership of large science teams that pursue answers to big questions about the universe. Currently, she is a member of JWST’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS) and Next Generation Deep Extragalactic Exploratory Public (NGDEEP) surveys. In addition to leading Hubble’s Frontier Fields program earlier in her career, she was also a member of the telescope’s Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS). During her career, she has pioneered the use of realistic numerical simulations of galaxies to interpret deep Hubble and JWST images.
She has published almost 300 papers in a range of publications, including the Astrophysical Journal, the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and Astronomy and Astrophysics, concentrating on galaxy evolution, galaxy mergers, extragalactic surveys, and the high-redshift universe. She has organized 18 scientific conferences, and presented her work around the world at academic institutions and in professional symposia. She regularly serves as a reviewer for professional journals, national scientific organizations, and other institutions. Dr. Lotz is a member of the American Astronomical Society and the IAU (International Astronomical Union).
Education: PhD in Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University
AB in Physics and Astronomy, Bryn Mawr College
Research Topics: Galaxy Evolution, Galaxy Mergers, Extragalactic Surveys, High-Redshift Universe, Gravitational Lensing, Astro Statistics/Machine Learning, Galaxy Morphology.
Arthur Clarke Awards Special Guest
Nicola Fox
will introduce Awardee STScI and Jennifer Lotz
As the Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, Dr. Nicola Fox directs ~100 NASA missions to explore the secrets of the universe–missions that use the view from space to assess questions as practical as hurricane formation, as enticing as the prospect of lunar resources, as amazing as behavior in weightlessness, and as profound as the origin of the universe. She is responsible for fostering an inclusive, welcoming atmosphere and supporting a diverse team of space scientists and engineers around the country. As the AA, Dr. Fox creates a balanced portfolio of carefully chosen missions and research goals to enable a deep scientific understanding of Earth, other planets, the Sun, and the universe. These efforts lay the intellectual foundation for the robotic and human expeditions of the future, while meeting today’s needs for scientific information to address national concerns.
Dr. Fox joined NASA in 2018 as SMD’s Director of the Heliophysics Division, where she led a world-class team in understanding Earth’s most important and life-sustaining star. She oversaw NASA’s work to study key space phenomena and improve situational awareness of the very space our astronauts, satellites, and robotic missions travel through as they explore the solar system and beyond. Her portfolio also included NASA’s robust space weather research to help the U.S. government better predict space weather, which can interfere with radio communications, affect GPS accuracy, and even–when extreme–affect electrical grids on the ground.
Dr. Fox has authored numerous scientific articles and papers, in addition to delivering science presentations worldwide. She is known for her keen ability to make science accessible to a broad range of audiences, as well as her stellar leadership, creating a sense of purpose and belonging in her teams. In 2021 she was awarded the American Astronautical Society’s Carl Sagan Memorial Award for her demonstrated leadership in the field of heliophysics. In 2020 she was awarded NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal.
Prior to August 2018, Dr. Fox worked at the Applied Physics Lab at the Johns Hopkins University, where she was the chief scientist for heliophysics, as well as the project scientist for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe–humanity’s first mission to a star. Dr. Fox’s extensive project, program, and supervisory experience included serving as the Deputy Project Scientist for the Van Allen Probes and the operations scientist for the International Solar Terrestrial Physics program.
Dr. Fox graduated from The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London with a B.S. in Physics. She received an M.S. in Telematics and Satellite Communications from the University of Surrey. She then returned to Imperial College to complete a Ph.D. in Space and Atmospheric Physics.
