Keynote Speaker - Dr. Jane R. Rigby (1996, DE)

Jane Rigby's research focuses on the evolution of star-forming galaxies and their central supermassive black holes. Her research frequently uses the techniques of gravitational lensing and diagnostic spectroscopy. She is an active user of the Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, and Herschel observatories in space, and of the Keck and Magellan observatories on Earth. In 2018, Rigby received the John C. Lindsay Memorial Award for Space Science. Rigby is the Principal Investigator of the "TEMPLATES" Early Release Science program on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and has published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers. 

Rigby serves as the Operations Project Scientist for JWST. Rigby is a NASA headquarters-appointed member of the Science and Technology Definition Team for the NASA mission concept LUVOIR.

A dynamic communicator of science, Rigby has given public lectures to large audiences including (video links):  TEDx, the Library of Congress, and the Huntington Library.  

Before coming to NASA, Dr. Rigby was a Carnegie Fellow and a Spitzer Fellow at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, CA. She earned Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Astronomy from Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona, and holds a B.S. degree in Physics and a B.S. degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics, both from Penn State.