About Our Guest Speakers

Rita Colwell

Rita Colwell has been director of the NSF since 1998. She has spearheaded the agency's emphases in K-12 science and mathematics education, graduate science and engineering education and training, and increased participation of women and minorities in science and engineering. Under Colwell's leadership, the agency has supported major new initiatives in the areas of nanotechnology, biocomplexity, information technology, and the 21st century workforce. Before taking the helm at NSF, Colwell was president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and professor of microbiology at the University of Maryland. She holds a B.S. in bacteriology and an M.S. in genetics from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Washington.

Jerry Nelson

Jerry Nelson is Director of the Center for Adaptive Optics and a professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). Prior to his appointment at UCSC, Professor Nelson held positions as a Divisional Fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley, and Project Scientist at the Keck Observatory, Hawaii. Amongst the awards and honors he has received are the Andre Lallemand Prize of the French Academy of Sciences, the Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize of the Optical Society of America, and the A.A.S. Dannie Heinman Prize for Astrophysics. He is a Fellow of the SPIE (The International Society for Optical Engineering) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Andrea Ghez

Dr. Ghez is a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA. She was a Hubble Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona in 1992. Her primary research interests are the development and application of high spatial resolution infrared imaging techniques to basic research in astronomy. In particular, Dr. Ghez's research has focused on two areas: the origin and early life of stars and planets; and more recently, an investigation of the distribution and nature of the matter at the center of our galaxy, that has demonstrated the existence of a supermassive black hole. She is a member of the American Astronomical Society and the American Physical Society. Her honors and awards include the Amelia Earhart Award, a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, the Annie Jump Cannon Award, a Sloan Fellowship, a Packard Foundation Fellowship, the Pierce prize from the American Astronomical Society, and the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award from the American Physical Society.

Austin Roorda

Austin Roorda is an Assistant Professor of Optics at the University of Houston’s College of Optometry. He received his Ph.D. in Vision Science and Physics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Rochester, he utilized the world's first ophthalmoscope equipped with adaptive optics to measure the properties of photoreceptors in living human eyes. By combining adaptive optics imaging with retinal densitometry, he was able, for the first time ever, to map the trichromatic cone mosaic. He has recently completed building an Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Opthalmoscope System and with this has recorded the flow of blood in the blood vessels of the human retina. This instrument with further development has the potential to become a major diagnostic tool for the detection of eye disease.

Lisa Hunter

Lisa Hunter is the Associate Director for Outreach and Education programs of the Center for Adaptive Optics (CfAO). These programs are directed at students from high school to those at graduate and postdoctoral levels, and include efforts to recruit and retain historically underrepresented groups. Before joining the CfAO, Lisa served as co-director of UCSC's ACCESS program, which facilitates the transfer of Community College students into biomedical programs at UCSC. Her current interests include developing CfAO educational projects that focus on inquiry-based teaching; mentoring programs, and increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in all CfAO activities. She earned her B.A. degree in chemistry from Sonoma State University and her M.S. in chemistry from UCSC.