France Córdova
President of the Science Philanthropy Alliance; former Director of NSF
France Córdova is an American astrophysicist and senior science administrator who was the fourteenth director of the National Science Foundation and the first woman to be NASA’s Chief Scientist. She was the eleventh President of Purdue University, chancellor of the University of California at Riverside, vice-chancellor for research at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and department head at Penn State. She is a Kilby Laureate and has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been inducted into the California Hall of Fame and the Stanford University Multicultural Hall of Fame. She was in the vanguard of researchers using a multi-wavelength approach to investigate close binary star systems using both space-based and ground-based telescopes. She was a co-investigator on a multiwavelength telescope on the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (ESA’s XMM-Newton).
Dr. Córdova said: “I’m thrilled to join such a venturesome group, attempting to do novel space science experiments searching for signs of life beyond Earth with great expectations.”
