Aomawa shields biography for kids
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Aomawa Shields
Editor’s note: Shields has continued to explore the cosmos since this profile was published. In a NOVA video released in Sept. 2018, she discusses her passions and the trajectory that led to her current role as exoplanet astronomer. Click here to watch.
Sipping hot cocoa before dawn at the Grainger Observatory during her upper year, Aomawa Shields ’93 didn’t mind the cold or even waking up at 4 a.m. to join her physics classmates in observing Jupiter’s moons with a telescope. “I have never forgotten that moment,” Shields says.
“Even though astronomy has become very remote controlled, what originally drew me to [it] was just being outside and looking up at the stars.”
Last summer, Shields received her Ph.D. in astronomy and astrobiology, and she’s now doing postdoctoral work at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics—thanks to a National Science Foundation fellowship. Shields is continuing her research on the
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Aomawa Shields
Dr. Aomawa Shields is an Astronomer and Astrobiologist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of California, Los Angeles and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She was awarded a National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship and a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Program Fellowship beginning Fall 2014 to study the possible climates and potential habitability of planets orbiting in multiple-planet systems around low-mass stars. She uses computer models as well as actual data from recently discovered planetary systems to determine the atmospheric and orbital conditions necessary for surface liquid water to exist on the most promising candidates for habitable planets in these systems. Aomawa was recently named a 2015 TED Fellow, and gave a talk on extrasolar planet climatology (among other things) at the TED conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada in March 2015. Check out her TED talk
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Is anybody else out there? As a child, Aomawa Shields was always looking at the sky and dreaming of becoming an astronaut. Now an astronomer and astrobiologist at the top of her field, Dr. Shields studies the universe outside our Solar System, researching and uncovering the planets circling distant stars with just the right conditions that could support life.
In order to ultimately achieve her life-long dream Dr. Shields had to overcome discouragement from others, self-doubt, and uncertainty that she belonged. Her complex journey included a period where she left the field and pursued acting professionally.
Hear more as Dr. Shields reflects on her life as an astronomer, classically trained actor, and Black woman in STEM. Additionally, she fryst vatten the founder and director of Rising Stargirls, a program dedicated to encouraging girls of all colors and backgrounds to learn, explore, and discover the universe using theater, writing and visual art.
In association with Wonderfest
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