MEET AMBER STRAUGHN: DEPUTY PROJECT SCIENTIST FOR JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE EDUCATION AND PUBLIC OUTREACH

Dr. Amber Straughn is a Research Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and serves as the Deputy Project Scientist for James Webb Space Telescope Education and Public Outreach.

Amber grew up in the small farming town of Bee Branch, Arkansas where her fascination with astronomy began under beautifully dark, rural skies. She obtained her B.S. in Physics at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 2002, and completed her M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics at Arizona State University in 2008. Amber has been at Goddard full-time since 2008; prior to her current role she held a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellowship. She has been involved in NASA Education and Research programs since her undergrad years, beginning with flying an experiment on NASA’s microgravity KC-135 plane (the “vomit comet”) in 2001. During graduate school at Arizona State, Amber received the NASA Space Grant Fellowship for summer studies, and in 2005 was awarded the 3-year NASA Harriett Jenkins Predoctoral Fellowship.

Amber’s research focuses on interacting and star-forming galaxies in the context of galaxy assembly, and she has most recently been working on infrared spectroscopic data from the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on Hubble Space Telescope.  

She is a member of the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee’s Early Release Science team and the HST Multi-Cycle Treasury CANDELS team. Her broad research interests include galaxy formation and evolution, galaxy mergers and interactions, physical processes induced by galaxy interactions including star formation and black hole growth, emission-line galaxies, and dark energy and its effect on the galaxy merger rate.

In addition to research, Amber’s role with the James Webb Space Telescope project involves working with Education and Public Outreach (EPO) activities, as well as Public Affairs and work with the media. She helps to develop the EPO Plan for the project, and participates in various public outreach efforts such as speaking at schools, astronomy clubs, museums, and research societies. Amber is also involved with media outlets, having done several live television interviews, media features for NASA (see http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/webb-faqs.html), and appeared in the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon's "Hubble Gotchu" segment that aired in August 2010. She very much enjoys interacting with the public.

Amber lives in Glenn Dale, Md., with her husband Matt and her two Great Danes and one cat. She has been an active yoga practitioner for years, and teaches a volunteer yoga class weekly. Amber is very involved in community and volunteer work, and loves to cook.