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 materUniversity of California, Los Angeles
Scientific career
InstitutionsInfrared Processing and Analysis Center
Olin College
ThesisSolar Radiation and Near-Earth Asteroids: Thermophysical Modeling and New Measurements of the Yarkovsky Effect (2013)
Doctoral advisorJean-Luc Margot

Early life and education edit

Nugent 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 edit

Nugent 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 edit

Nugent 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

Books edit

Nugent, Carrie (2017). Asteroid Hunters. Simon & Schuster Ltd. ISBN 9781471162398.

References edit

  1. ^ a b "Hall Of Fame – My blog". Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  2. ^ a b "Mira Costa honors six more distinguished alumni". The Beach Reporter. September 21, 2017. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
  3. ^ Hess, Peter. "Asteroid Hunter Carrie Nugent Is Trying to Save the World". Inverse. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  4. ^ "Biography of Carrie Nugent for Appearances, Speaking Engagements". www.allamericanspeakers.com. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  5. ^ Nugent, Carolyn Rosemary (2013). Solar Radiation and Near-Earth Asteroids: Thermophysical Modeling and New Measurements of the Yarkovsky Effect (Thesis). UCLA.
  6. ^ "We must keep searching the sky!". IPAC. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  7. ^ "Instructors – Summer App Space". Retrieved 2019-06-08.
  8. ^ "Secondhand Spacecraft Has Firsthand Asteroid Experience". www.lpi.usra.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
  9. ^ "» Vermin of the sky". live.iop-pp01.agh.sleek.net. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
  10. ^ 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)
  11. ^ Wolfe, Alexandra (2017-05-26). "Tales of an Asteroid Hunter". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
  12. ^ sara.cardine@latimes.com, Sara Cardine. "Asteroid's name skyrockets across social media". latimes.com. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
  13. ^ "Influx of New Faculty Join Olin College of Engineering | Olin College". www.olin.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
  14. ^ a b "Olin College Professor Carrie Nugent Awarded Carl Sagan Medal | Olin College". www.olin.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  15. ^ Fornoff, Marcheta. "An 'asteroid hunter' shares her job description". www.mprnews.org. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
  16. ^ "Mass Media Fellows Describe Their Experiences". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  17. ^ D'Arcy, Patrick (2016-01-05). "21 Rising Stars To Watch in 2016". TED Fellows. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  18. ^ Nugent, Carrie, Adventures of an asteroid hunter, retrieved 2019-06-06
  19. ^ "Carrie Nugent". Simon & Schuster. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  20. ^ "Asteroid Hunters". guardianbookshop.com. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  21. ^ TED-Ed (2017-10-16), The first asteroid ever discovered - Carrie Nugent, retrieved 2019-06-06
  22. ^ "About". Spacepod. Archived from the original on 2019-06-07. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  23. ^ 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.
  24. ^ "Carrie Nugent". www.planetary.org. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  25. ^ "(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.
  26. ^ "JPL Small-Body Database Browser". ssd.jpl.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  27. ^ "Meet the 2018 class of TED Fellows and Senior Fellows". TED Blog. 2018-01-09. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  28. ^ "DPS Announces 2019 Prize Winners | American Astronomical Society". aas.org. Retrieved 2019-06-06.

External links edit