Bodossaki Excellence Award 2024 | Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Chryssa Kouveliotou is an Astrophysics Professor in the Physics Department of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at The George Washington University, in Washington, DC. Her research is focused on High-Energy Astrophysical transients. Her two seminal discoveries are: a) the duration bimodality of Gamma Ray Bursts (brightest gamma-ray explosions in the Universe, in 1993), associated to mergers and collapsars; b) Magnetars (extremely magnetized neutron stars), which she discovered in 1998. She has also published papers in X-ray binaries, solar flares and merging galaxy clusters.
She was born in Athens, Greece in 1953, and graduated from the Arsakion High School in 1971. She graduated from the National University of Athens with a Bachelor’s degree in Physics in 1975; in 1977 she received a Master’s of Science Degree in Astrophysics at the University of Sussex, England and a Ph. D. from the Technical University of Munich and Max-Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany in 1981. After graduation, she was hired at the University of Athens Greece; she retired in 1994 to follow a career at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. She was originally a contractor with NASA, until she became a US citizen (2002) and joined NASA as a civil servant at the highest Government grade (GS 15-10). In 2013 she became a Senior Technologist (ST) of High-Energy Astrophysics (Senior Executive core). In February 2015, Dr. Kouveliotou retired from NASA and joined the George Washington University in Washington DC as a full Professor in Astrophysics. She was Department Chair (2020-΄23) and she is currently on a one-year sabbatical.
Dr. Kouveliotou has been the principal and co-investigator of numerous research projects in the U.S. and in Europe, winning ~$4.0M. She is a founding member of multiple scientific collaborations worldwide, such as a €1.7M Research Training Network in Europe and the (multi-national) GRACE collaboration on GRB optical follow-ups with the European Southern Observatory. She is an affiliate scientist of the NASA/Swift and of the Fermi/GBM missions, and she is the Science co-chair of Gamow Explorer to be proposed to the next NASA Medium Explorer program.
Dr. Kouveliotou has 493 refereed publications (of which 44 are in Nature and 23 in Science) with a Hirsh-index = 102 (ADS). She has co-edited 3 books, including one about “Gamma-Ray Bursts” (Cambridge University Press, December 2012). She is one of the 250 most-cited space science researchers worldwide (having occupied at times the 6th, 8th, and 10th place) with a current total of 49,222 citations and 412,837 reads (ADS; for refereed publications only).
Dr. Kouveliotou has served as a referee in astronomical Journals, a panelist in Committees, Evaluation Boards and Ph.D. committees in the USA and internationally. In 2013 she was asked by the NASA Advisory Council to chair the roadmap of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate/ Astrophysics Division. Their report “Enduring Quests – Daring Visions (NASA Astrophysics in the Next Three Decades)” was completed in 8 months.
Dr. Kouveliotou has received multiple awards including the Rossi, Descartes, Heineman and SHAW prizes and the Greek Government Award of Commander of the Order of the Honour for Excellence in Science. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member in the Athens Academy. She has honourary PhDs from the University of Sussex, UK and the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
