CELESTIAL BODIES: A CONVERSATION

DOUGLAS A. ROBERTS, PH.D., is the president and CEO of the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, where he brings together scientific and technical expertise with contemporary learning methods that create engaging educational experiences for the museum. With more than two decades in the museum field, he deftly establishes strategic connections between informal science education and research. He has been involved in astrophysics research at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, as well as scientific outreach through the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. Although science education and public engagement takes up most of his time, Roberts is also engaged in active research, using telescopes like the Very Large Array radio telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope to better understand the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Looking up at the stars still gives him a thrill and he feels it's the next best thing to going to space.

Known as the “space mechanic,” ELIO MORILLO is a Mars 2020 operations engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Born in Ecuador and raised in Puerto Rico and New York, Morillo is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion, bringing years of volunteering and organization experience to Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Hispanic Employee Resource Group and New Researchers and Scientists Group, where he serves as the networking chair. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and currently resides in California.

SARAFINA EL-BADRY NANCE is an Egyptian American astrophysicist, analog astronaut, and women's health advocate. She is the recipient of several National Science Foundation fellowships, and various outlets – including the BBC, NPR, and National Geographic – have featured her work. El-Badry Nance has also been named one of Forbes' "30 Inspirational Women" and was on Forbes' list of "30 Under 30" and the Arab American Foundation's "40 Under 40." Her latest work is Starstruck: A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark (Dutton).