Maria T. Zuber

Maria Zuber is Vice President for Research and the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics at MIT, where she is responsible for research administration and policy. She oversees MIT Lincoln Laboratory and more than a dozen interdisciplinary research laboratories and centers, including the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, the MIT Energy and Environmental Solutions Initiatives, the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the Research Laboratory of Electronics, the Materials Research Laboratory, MIT.nano, and Haystack Observatory. She also oversees MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade. Vice President Zuber is responsible for intellectual property and research integrity and compliance, as well as research relationships with the federal government. She serves as the senior officer responsible for the Institute’s postdoctoral scholars and research staff. Zuber’s research bridges planetary geophysics and the technology of space‐based laser and radio systems. Since 1990, she has held leadership roles associated with a dozen scientific experiments or instrumentation on ten NASA missions, most notably serving as Principal Investigator of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission. She currently serves as Chair of the Standing Review Board of NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission. Zuber holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an Sc.M. and Ph.D. from Brown. She has won numerous awards including the MIT James R. Killian, Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, the highest honor the MIT faculty bestows to one of its own. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geological Society of America, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the American Geophysical Union. In 2012 she was awarded AGU’s Harry H. Hess Medal, and in 2019 she was awarded the Gerard P. Kuiper Prize of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. Vice President Zuber is the first woman to lead a science department at MIT and the first to lead a NASA planetary mission. In 2004, appointed by President George W. Bush, she served on the Presidential Commission on the Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy. In 2002 Discover magazine named her one of the 50 most important women in science and, in 2008 she was named to the USNews/Harvard Kennedy School List of America’s Best Leaders. In 2013, President Obama appointed her to the National Science Board, and in 2018 she was reappointed by President Trump. She served as Board Chair from 2016-2018. In 2021, President Biden named her as co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).