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Iain Neill Reid

Multi-Mission Project Scientist
Iain Neill Reid, a man with a light skin tone and thin-rimmed glasses, is smiling. His fine light reddish-brown and white hair is short, and partially sweeps over his forehead. He has a reddish-brown and white goatee, and is dressed in a gray turtleneck shirt.

As the multi-mission project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Dr. Iain Neill Reid has a broad range of responsibilities associated with developing, coordinating, and maximizing the scientific impact of current and future missions at STScI. He interacts closely with the mission heads and the associate director for science to facilitate cross-mission scientific synergies, and alignment within the institute and our external stakeholders.

From 2015 to 2024, he served as the institute’s associate director for science, where he was responsible for oversight of the research infrastructure as well as its external science policies, including management of Hubble’s Telescope Allocation Committee (TAC) process, and development of science policies and peer review for the James Webb Space Telescope. He has served as an astronomer at the institute since 2007 and joined as an associate astronomer in 2001. He was the first researcher to highlight the important implications of Hipparcos subdwarf parallax measurements for globular cluster distances and ages, and was a key member of the 2MASS Rare Objects team, which characterized the frequency and intrinsic properties of brown dwarfs.

Dr. Reid’s research has centered on galactic structure, including low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and the initial stellar mass function. He has published more than 240 refereed publications that include the Astronomical Journal, the Astrophysical Journal, the Astrophysics and Space Science Library publications, and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. He also regularly presents his work at professional conferences, including the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Meeting, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, and the SPIE conference. He co-authored “New Light on Dark Stars” (Springer, 2005), a textbook on low-mass stars, with Suzanne Hawley.

Before joining the institute, Dr. Reid served as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, a senior research associate and senior research fellow at the California Institute of Technology, a senior research fellow at Royal Greenwich Observatory, and a Science and Engineering Research Council Fellow at Sussex University. He was also the project scientist for the second Palomar Sky Survey. Throughout his career, he has served as a reviewer for NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, the time allocation process for the European Southern Observatory, the Astro 2010 Programmatic Prioritization Panel on Optical and Infrared Astronomy from the Ground, and the 2014 NASA Senior Review of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. He is a member of the AAS and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was a longtime fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Education:

PhD in Astronomy, University of Edinburgh
BS in in Astronomy, University of St Andrews

 

Research Interests:

Brown Dwarfs, Galactic Structure, Low-Mass Stars, Large-Scale Surveys, Stellar Populations, Variables in the Magellanic Clouds

 

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