SPACE PRIZE MENTOR

Naomi Rowe-Gurney

Dr. Naomi Rowe-Gurney is a postdoctoral research associate at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center employed by Howard University. She is a solar system ambassador for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) working with Dr Stefanie Milam and Dr Heidi Hammel. She obtained her PhD in 2021 from the University of Leicester working with supervisor Dr Leigh Fletcher. Her thesis used archived data from the Spitzer Space Telescope to study the thermal structure and composition of the middle atmospheres of the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. She used the retrieval algorithm NEMESIS and built a consistent retrieval framework for the ice giant planets ahead of the launch of the JWST. Throughout the PhD, Naomi used her teaching experience to partake in significant outreach and public engagement work. Naomi also engaged in considerable equality, diversity and inclusion work and was an active member of university committees, as well as promoting science to underrepresented groups. The majority of the engagement work she focused on was for the JWST and promoting its use for looking at our own solar system, especially the giant planets.