PASADENA, Calif.-France Córdova, the chancellor of UC Riverside and a graduate of the California Institute of Technology, will speak at her alma mater at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, March 9, in Beckman Institute Auditorium on the Caltech campus.
Córdova's appearance is part of the Caltech Presidential Lecture Series on Achieving Diversity in Science, Math, and Engineering. The title of her speech is "Stars in Her Eyes: From Poet to Rocket Scientist to Chancellor."
A native of La Puente and the oldest of 12 children, Córdova graduated cum laude from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in English. During her undergraduate career she did anthropological field work among the Zapotecs in Oaxaca, Mexico, but later changed her career direction and entered Caltech as a graduate student. She earned her doctorate in physics in 1979.
Córdova has achieved distinction as an astrophysics professor and has served both as a professor of physics and vice chancellor for research at UC Santa Barbara. She was chief scientist at NASA from 1993 to 1996, and served as the primary scientific adviser to the NASA administrator and as the principal interface between NASA and the broader scientific community. She also headed the department of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University, and was deputy group leader of the Space Astronomy and Astrophysics Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Since 2002 she has served as the seventh chancellor of UC Riverside.
Córdova's scientific contributions have been in the areas of observational and experimental astrophysics, multispectral research on X-ray and gamma-ray sources, and space-borne instrumentation. She is a winner of NASA's Distinguished Service Medal and is the author of more than 140 scientific papers.
The Caltech lecture series was established to bring campus speakers who have had highly successful experiences in promoting women and underrepresented minorities in science and technology. The Córdova lecture is sponsored by the Office of the President; the Office of Minority Student Education; the Officers of the Faculty; the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy; and the Caltech Women's Center.
The event is free and open to the public. No tickets or reservations are required. Free parking is available in the parking structure on Wilson Avenue across from the Beckman Institute.
Written by Robert Tindol