Heidi Jo Newberg (born Heidi Jo Marvin) is an American astrophysicist known for her work in understanding the structure of our Milky Way galaxy. Among her team's findings is the first-ever evidence that the Milky Way is "cannibalizing" stars from smaller galaxies. She is a founding participant in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE). She is currently an associate professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, USA.

Newberg received her bachelor's degree in Physics from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1987. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992, working on the Berkeley Automated Supernova Search, which measured the supernova rates as a function of supernova type in Virgo-distance galaxies; and the Supernova Cosmology Project, which measured the cosmological parameters Omega and Lambda using the light curves of distant supernovae, and provided strong evidence that the expansion of our universe is accelerating. In 2007, she shared the Gruber Prize in Cosmology along with the other members of the Supernova Cosmology Project for this work. At Fermilab, she worked on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey starting in 1992. She joined the faculty of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1999.

She has published papers in diverse areas of galactic and extragalactic astronomy, including: supernova phenomenology, measuring cosmological parameters from supernovae, galaxy photometry, color selection of QSOs, properties of stars, and the structure of our galaxy.

Personal life

Newberg was born in Washington, D.C.. She is married to Lee Newberg and has four children.

References

External links

• Heidi Jo Newberg's webpage at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• List of scholarly publications as provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) abstract server.
• Chapter contributor to Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory: Women Scientists Speak Out by Emily Monosson (ISBN 978-0801446641)