Web Home for Dr. Carol Christian


Welcome to the internet home for C. Christian.

She is a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD. She is the Deputy of the Community Missions Office (CMO), the division of STScI that finds creative solutions and applies expertise from Hubble to new scientific missions and programs. She also directs the education activities of the National Virtual Observatory. Her expertise is in science education, information technologies, user interfaces, and stellar populations in astronomy. She also has experience in Science and Technology Policy. Dr. Christian is a member of the American Astronomical Society and its Education Committee and is on several committees within the Board of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and serves on the NASA Langley Earth Science Data User Group. In addition, she is a member of several technical committees of the Internatiomal Aeronautical Federation (Space Astronomy, Education, Cultural Utilization of Space).

She continues her collaboration with WYPR, the Baltimore NPR radio station where she co-hosts the astronomy vignette "Skywatch". It can be heard at 8:33AM Thursday mornings and as a podcast.

In 2003-2006, for part of her time, she served as a Science and Technology Policy Advisor at the US Department of State, working on promoting pervasive use of Geographic Information Systems and satellite remote sensing data to State bureaus and posts. Her home base was the Information Technology group, eDiplomacy. Formerly, before her work at the Department of State began, she was the first Deputy of CMO, following an interesting stint as the Head of "Development, Technology and Innovation" or DTI at STScI. For two and a half years, DTI brought you webcasts of science symposia, technical workshops, science colloquia and a few fun events as well as significant improvements in processes involving IT.

Dr. Christian invented "Innovation in the SharkCage" - an intensive workshop facilitated by DTI for STScI personnel to apply their accumulated expertise to challenges in providing exemplary service to the science community at an optimum cost. She also directed the interesting design of the DTI website.

In previous incarnations, Dr. Christian was the Head of the Office of Public Outreach, directing the Hubble News program, the construction of the main STScI public website, and the SITES HST exhibition.

In addition to being a member of the Hubble Heritage project, she also created the two educational programs:

- Amazing Space: educational resources for supporting pre-college curricula and teacher training (50 states, > 250 school districts!).

- Tour the Cosmos: radio/internet simulcasts on hot topics in HST research.

Listen to a podcast of Carol and Alberto Conti at Astrofest 2008. "Sky in Google Earth".

Hear [mp2, 6Mb] Calgary's Mike Blanchard of AM 770 CHQR interview Carol on "Sky in Google Earth".