Biography

Dr. Alycia Weinberger is a Staff Scientist and Associate Director of the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. Weinberger's research interests are mainly in planet formation, young stars, and exoplanets where she enjoys employing novel observational methods on large ground and space telescopes. She is particularly interested in how rocky planets interact with their natal material and get to their final orbits and compositions. She is currently elected to the Board of Trustees of the American Astronomical Society; as one of the Vice Presidents, she is responsible for the scientific content of the annual meetings. As Associate Director at the Earth and Planets Laboratory, she manages the postdoctoral fellowship program, which brings in outstanding early career researchers.

Weinberger received a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology, where her research was on the environment of massive black holes in active galaxies. Prior to joining Carnegie Science, Weinberger was a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Los Angeles associated with the Hubble Space Telescope’s first infrared instrument NICMOS and the NASA Astrobiology Institute.  She has also served on the National Academies of Sciences Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics, the US Extremely Large Telescope Program Advisory Committee, Carnegie's Magellan Telescopes Science Advisory Committee, and the NASA Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer Key Science Team. Weinberger’s awards and honors include the Vainu Bappu Gold Medal of Astronomical Society of India and the Annie Jump Cannon Award. She is a fellow of the American Astronomical Society.