Carrie Nugent (born 1984) is an assistant professor of computational physics and planetary science at Olin College. She studies near-Earth objects. She is also a popular science communicator, and is a Senior TED Fellow. The asteroid 8801 Nugent was named after her.
Carrie Nugent | |
|---|---|
| Born | Carrie Rosemary Nugent 1984 (age 39–40) |
| Alma mater | University of California, Los Angeles |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Infrared Processing and Analysis Center Olin College |
| Thesis | Solar Radiation and Near-Earth Asteroids: Thermophysical Modeling and New Measurements of the Yarkovsky Effect (2013) |
| Doctoral advisor | Jean-Luc Margot |
Early life and education
editNugent studied at Mira Costa High School, graduating in the class of 2002.[1][2] She earned an undergraduate degree in physics.[3] She studied geophysics at University of California, Los Angeles, and earned her PhD in 2013.[4] She was supervised by Jean-Luc Margot and investigated the Yarkovsky effect.[5] She served as an Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) Fellow from 2015.[6] She worked at the Summer App Space, a Los Angeles based apprenticeship for people to learn programming whilst working on space projects.[7]
Research and career
editNugent worked with the Near-Earth Object part of the NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, known as NEOWISE.[8][9] She was part of the Near-Earth Object Camera asteroid hunting teams.[10] For this, Nugent was awarded the NASA Group Achievement Award. She believes asteroid impact is the only natural disaster that we can prevent.[11] In 2015 she named an asteroid after Malala Yousafzai.[12]
Nugent joined the faculty at Olin College as an assistant professor of computational physics and planetary science in 2018.[13][14] She works on asteroid detection, and focuses on the identification of asteroids that could be a threat to Earth.[15]
Public engagement
editNugent was a AAAS Mass Media Fellow in 2008.[16] She was selected as a TED Fellow in 2016, and a Senior TED Fellow in 2018.[17] Nugent delivered a TED talk Adventures of an asteroid hunter at the TED conference in 2016.[18] After her TED talk, Nugent wrote the book Asteroid Hunters with Simon & Schuster.[19][20] The talk was also used in a TED-Ed video.[21] In her spare time she produces the podcast SpacePod.[22] The podcast involves short episodes (15 minute in length) featuring relaxed conversations with space explorers.[23] She serves as one of The Planetary Society experts.[24] A question about Nugent's research was once included in Jeopardy!.[25]
Awards and honours
edit- 2012 NEOWISE Team NASA Group Achievement Award
- 2013 8801 Nugent named in her honour[26]
- 2017 Mira Costa High School Alumni Hall of Fame[1][2]
- 2018 TED Senior Fellow[27]
- 2019 Carl Sagan Medal[14][28]
Books
editNugent, Carrie (2017). Asteroid Hunters. Simon & Schuster Ltd. ISBN 9781471162398.
References
edit- ^ a b "Hall Of Fame – My blog". Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ a b "Mira Costa honors six more distinguished alumni". The Beach Reporter. September 21, 2017. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
- ^ Hess, Peter. "Asteroid Hunter Carrie Nugent Is Trying to Save the World". Inverse. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ "Biography of Carrie Nugent for Appearances, Speaking Engagements". www.allamericanspeakers.com. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ Nugent, Carolyn Rosemary (2013). Solar Radiation and Near-Earth Asteroids: Thermophysical Modeling and New Measurements of the Yarkovsky Effect (Thesis). UCLA.
- ^ "We must keep searching the sky!". IPAC. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ "Instructors – Summer App Space". Retrieved 2019-06-08.
- ^ "Secondhand Spacecraft Has Firsthand Asteroid Experience". www.lpi.usra.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
- ^ "» Vermin of the sky". live.iop-pp01.agh.sleek.net. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
- ^ Insider, Ariel Schwartz, Business. "An asteroid hunter reveals how she finds the space rocks that could destroy earth". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
{{cite web}}:|first=has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Wolfe, Alexandra (2017-05-26). "Tales of an Asteroid Hunter". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
- ^ sara.cardine@latimes.com, Sara Cardine. "Asteroid's name skyrockets across social media". latimes.com. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
- ^ "Influx of New Faculty Join Olin College of Engineering | Olin College". www.olin.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
- ^ a b "Olin College Professor Carrie Nugent Awarded Carl Sagan Medal | Olin College". www.olin.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ Fornoff, Marcheta. "An 'asteroid hunter' shares her job description". www.mprnews.org. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
- ^ "Mass Media Fellows Describe Their Experiences". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ D'Arcy, Patrick (2016-01-05). "21 Rising Stars To Watch in 2016". TED Fellows. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ Nugent, Carrie, Adventures of an asteroid hunter, retrieved 2019-06-06
- ^ "Carrie Nugent". Simon & Schuster. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ "Asteroid Hunters". guardianbookshop.com. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ TED-Ed (2017-10-16), The first asteroid ever discovered - Carrie Nugent, retrieved 2019-06-06
- ^ "About". Spacepod. Archived from the original on 2019-06-07. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ Singer, Kelsi (2015-09-24). "Great New Science Podcast by Dr. Carrie Nugent". Women in Planetary Science: Female Scientists on Careers, Research, Space Science, and Work/Life Balance. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
- ^ "Carrie Nugent". www.planetary.org. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ "(Cara Santa Maria gives the clue.) Caltech scientist Carrie Nugent explained how to track & predict the impact these would have if on a collision course with Earth; the method used in the movie Armageddon is not very practical - JeopardyQuestions.com". jeopardyquestions.com. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
- ^ "JPL Small-Body Database Browser". ssd.jpl.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ "Meet the 2018 class of TED Fellows and Senior Fellows". TED Blog. 2018-01-09. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
- ^ "DPS Announces 2019 Prize Winners | American Astronomical Society". aas.org. Retrieved 2019-06-06.