Professor Andrea Ghez

2004 Faculty Prize Recipient

Image of Professor Andrea Ghez

Professor Andrea Ghez, the 10th recipient of the Gold Shield Faculty Prize, An Award for Academic Excellence, is a UCLA professor in Physics and Astronomy. Her accomplishments have attracted worldwide attention creating renewed excitement for established astrophysicists as well as undergraduate students—so many new questions, so many new directions to go, so many promising new areas of research—all resulting from her discoveries and analyses. The “mystery” of a black hole in the middle of our own galaxy has perplexed scientists for years. Professor Ghez has now proven that the phenomenon exists in our own Milky Way. With the new technology provided by the Keck 1 telescope in Hawaii, she and her group have discovered that the hole itself has a mass that is approximately 4 million times that of our sun; she has studied the surprisingly young stars that surround the black hole and has found that they behave in unexpected ways. Her focus on how stars and planets form and her resulting discoveries will keep many astrophysicists busy for some time, and will attract new talent to the field.

Professor Ghez has been called “one of the top 20 scientists in the country under the age of 40” and it has been said that her research “will likely change our fundamental understanding of the world and our place in it” (Discover). She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her other numerous awards include the Amelia Earhart Award, a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and she was honored by being selected to deliver the UCLA Regent Lecture in 2004.

Andrea earned her B.S. from MIT and her Ph.D. from CalTech. She came to UCLA in 1994. In addition to her extraordinary research, she has been a major presence on campus in many ways. Her favorite classes to teach are those for undergraduates such as the general education course Astro-3, which is an introduction to astronomy for non-science majors. She encourages her undergraduate students to pursue careers and to continue with graduate studies and records show that she has done so successfully. She is the most sought-after guest lecturer on the campus; she has served on the departmental graduate student admission committee; and she has attended Development Office events organized to help alumni with fund-raising. Her prominence in her field has the world looking not only at Andrea Ghez, but also at UCLA. Gold Shield could not have found a more deserving recipient for the 2004 Faculty Prize.