Our Executive Mentors

B. Ashley Zauderer, PhD

Dr. Ashley Zauderer is a Program Director in the Division of Astronomical Sciences within the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Her primary responsibility is Electromagnetic Spectrum Management, where she works to represent the scientific interests for protection and use of the electromagnetic spectrum both within the United States and internationally. In this role, she is the U.S. Head of Delegation to the Radio astronomy Working Party (7D) of the International Telecommunication Union and served as a spokesperson on the U.S. delegation for three agenda items at the 2019 World Radio Conference. Dr. Zauderer works to coordinate frequency assignments with scientific uses, for example, within the National Radio Quiet Zone to provide a radio quiet environment for the Green Bank Observatory’s telescopes.

At the National Science Foundation, Dr. Zauderer also serves as the Program Officer overseeing the Arecibo Observatory. She is a Sophie and Tycho Brahe Visiting Professor of Astronomy at the Neils Bohr Institute DARK Cosmology Center, University of Copenhagen. Prior to joining the National Science Foundation in 2017, Dr. Zauderer led the Mathematical & Physical Sciences Department for the John Templeton Foundation from 2014 – 2017, where she developed a portfolio of research grants focused on foundational questions in mathematics, physics, cosmology, and astronomy.

Dr. Zauderer completed her masters and Ph.D. in Astronomy at the University of Maryland, College Park and her bachelor’s in Astrophysics at Agnes Scott College, working for stints as a research intern for the California Institute of Technology and Cornell University before and during graduate school. Upon completion of her Ph.D., she was a Research Fellow and an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow in the Berger Time Domain Group at Harvard University.

Her research specialization is observational radio astronomy applied to some of the most explosive astrophysical transients in the Universe including supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and tidal disruption events of stars around supermassive black holes. She has also studied colliding wind binary star systems, the interstellar medium, merging galaxies, and an atmospheric correction technique for radio telescopes analogous to laser guide star adaptive optics.