Erika Hamden facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Erika Hamden
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| Born |
Erika Tobiason Hamden
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| Alma mater | Harvard College (AB) Le Cordon Bleu (Dip.) Columbia University (MPhil, MA, PhD) |
| Awards | TED Fellow (2019) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astrophysics |
| Institutions | California Institute of Technology University of Arizona |
| Thesis | FIREBall, CHAS, and the Diffuse Universe (2014) |
| Doctoral advisor | David Schiminovich |
Erika Tobiason Hamden is an American astrophysicist. She is a professor at the University of Arizona and Steward Observatory. Her work focuses on creating special cameras that can see ultraviolet (UV) light. She also studies how galaxies change over time.
Dr. Hamden was the main scientist and manager for a UV telescope called FIREBall-2. This telescope is designed to study the gas around galaxies. In 2019, she was chosen as a TED Fellow.
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Early Life and Education
Erika Hamden was born in Montclair, New Jersey. She went to Harvard College to study astrophysics. She graduated in 2006. While at Harvard, she worked at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics.
After college, she took a break from science. She earned a diploma from Le Cordon Bleu in London. Then, she worked as a chef in New Jersey.
In 2007, she decided to go back to school. She joined Columbia University for her advanced studies. She earned her PhD in 2014. During her PhD, she studied faint UV light from space. She also helped develop new UV cameras. From 2011 to 2014, she had a special fellowship from NASA.
Career and Research
After her PhD, Dr. Hamden became a researcher at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). There, she helped build a special ultraviolet telescope. This telescope is called "Faint Intergalactic medium Redshifted Emission Balloon" (FIREBall-2).
FIREBall-2 is designed to fly high up in the sky on a high-altitude balloon. It looks for UV light coming from the gas around galaxies. This gas is called the circumgalactic medium (CGM).
In 2014, she received a fellowship from the National Science Foundation. This helped her create tools to study galaxies. In 2016, she made history. She was the first woman to win a NASA Nancy Roman technology fellowship. This award was for her amazing work on new detectors. She also became a Robert Andrews Millikan fellow in 2017.
Studying Galaxies with FIREBall-2
In 2018, Dr. Hamden joined the University of Arizona. She set up a lab there to build UV detectors. She also continued her work on FIREBall-2. She is very interested in special silicon detectors. These detectors help capture UV light.
She also studies Lyman-alpha emission. This is a type of light that comes from the gas around galaxies. She has worked on special coatings for cameras. These coatings help the cameras see UV light better. FIREBall-2 was built to test these new technologies.
Dr. Hamden was the US lead for FIREBall-2. She worked on it from 2014 until its launch on September 22, 2018. She was even there when a falcon landed on the telescope before its launch!
Other Projects and Recognition
Dr. Hamden is part of the Goddard Space Flight Center's science group. In 2019, she was chosen as one of 20 TED fellows. Her TED Talk was a highlight of the April 2019 TED conference. It was also featured in Wired magazine.
Awards and Honors
Dr. Hamden has received many important awards. These include:
- Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
- TED fellow (2019)
- NASA Nancy Roman Technology Fellowship
- National Science Foundation (NSF) Astronomy and Astrophysics postdoctoral Fellow
- Robert Andrews Millikan Fellow in Experimental Physics
- NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow
