Bio

Madhulika (Lika) Guhathakurta is the Lead Program Scientist for the Living With a Star Program at the NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. LWS focuses on understanding and ultimately predicting solar variability and its diverse effects on Earth, human technology and astronauts in space. The systems science behind this new kind of weather outside of Earth’s terrestrial atmosphere is known as "Space Weather”. Dr. Guhathakurta also leads an international initiative known as the International Living With a Star that brings together all the space agencies of the world to contribute towards the scientific goal for understanding Space Weather. In addition, she manages a theory, modeling and data analysis program to integrate scientific output, data, and models to generate a comprehensive, systems understanding of Sun-Heliosphere-Planets coupling, the new discipline of heliophysics. Dr. Guhathakurta is a member of the National Space Weather Program and NASA lead on the SWx working group in UNCOPUOS. She has been a Co-Investigator on five Spartan 201 missions aboard space shuttles (STS-56, STS-64, STS-69, STS-87, STS-95) to study the solar corona in white-light and UV radiation and has authored over 70 publications. Education and outreach is another strong passion of Dr. Guhathakurta. To that effect she has helped create graduate level textbooks in heliophysics. She has partnered with the American Museum of Natural History in New York to produce two popular full dome planetarium shows that are being exhibited internationally and used by teachers to excite the next generation of space scientists.

A native of India, Dr. Guhathakurta received her Masters in Astrophysics from University of Delhi and Ph.D. in Physics from University of Denver and University of Colorado at Boulder.

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