User:BelindaJWilkes
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Belinda Wilkes, Fall 2012
Dr. Belinda J. Wilkes is a Senior Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Cambridge, MA, USA, where she has served for 12 years as Assistant Director of the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC). The CXC is responsible for the operations of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and for maximizing its scientific return. Chandra is one of NASA's four "Great Observatories". Dr. Wilkes has been appointed to succeed Dr. Harvey Tananbaum as Director of the CXC, and will assume the position starting on April 20, 2014.
Dr. Wilkes was born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England and grew up in Albrighton, Shropshire. She attended Wolverhampton Girls' High School followed by the University of St. Andrews, Scotland where she earned a B.Sc.(Hons) in Physics and Astronomy. She obtained her PhD in Astronomy from the University of Cambridge (Jesus College), England, where she carried out her research at the Institute of Astronomy. In 1982 she moved to the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory as a NATO postdoctoral fellow. In 1984 she joined SAO's High Energy Astrophysics Division, serving as data validation and verification (V&V) scientist for the Einstein X-ray Observatory data center and Lead V&V scientist at the ROSAT data center. In 1995, prior to the launch of Chandra (23 July, 1999), she became Deputy Group Leader of the CXC’s User Support Group and in 2001 was appointed CXC Assistant Director.
Dr. Wilkes' research relates to multi-wavelength studies of quasars: galaxies containing super-massive black holes at their centers and the most luminous sources in the Universe. She is the author of over 145 papers in refereed science journals and has served on a wide range of professional committees as well as various user and advisory committees and review boards for space and ground-based telescopes. She is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and a member of the American Astronomical Society and the International Astronomical Union.