Dr. Michelle Thaller is the Assistant Director for Science at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Michelle has a Bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from Harvard, and a Ph.D. from Georgia State University. After a post-doctoral research fellowship at Caltech, Michelle became particularly interested in public outreach and science communication and served as the public outreach lead for the Spitzer Space Telescope at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before moving to Goddard Space Flight Center, where she is the Assistant Director of Science. Michelle was one of the regular hosts of Discovery Science Channel’s “How the Universe Works,” and also hosted the podcast “Orbital Path” on public radio. She has received several high-profile awards for online science journalism and science leadership. NASA’s 
science themes include Earth science and climate change, the sun and space weather, solar system exploration, cosmology and the deep universe.