Aired November 23rd, 2019 11:00AM
Dr. Belinda Wilkes is the Director of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center and a Senior Astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA). She is an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, UK. She was born in England, obtained a BSc in Astronomy and Physics from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Cambridge, UK. She then moved to the USA, spending 2 years as a NATO postdoctoral fellow at the Steward Observatory, University of Arizona. She then moved to the High Energy Astrophysics Division at the CfA where she has been deeply involved in science operations for X-ray Observatories: Einstein and ROSAT, before transitioning to Chandra a few years before launch. Her research involves multi-wavelength studies of active galaxies and quasars powered by a super-massive black hole in their core.
