Alyssa Goodman is Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University, and a
Research Associate of the Smithsonian Institution.  Goodman and her
research group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in
Cambridge, MA study the dense gas between the stars. They are
particularly interested in how this interstellar gas arranges itself
into new stars. Their investigations use a variety of observational
techniques covering the spectral range from X- ray to radio.

Goodman is P.I. of The COMPLETE Survey of Star- Forming Regions, which,
in 2006, finished mapping out three very large star- forming regions in
our Galaxy in their entirety. These three regions were also fully
observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope, under the c2d "Legacy" Program,
in 2004-5.  The COMPLETE Survey represents a data set of unparalleled
diversity and is of order one thousand times larger than what was
available a decade ago. The database is allowing astrophysicists to
address questions like "how many stars like the Sun can form from a
given mass of gas in the Milky Way?"

Goodman also has a strong interest in scientific computing.  She
co-founded the The Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) and Harvard,
and she served as its Director from 2005-8. The IIC is a
multi-disciplinary center that fosters new work at the boundary between
computing and science.  Goodman's own research in the this area focuses
on new ways to visualize and analyze the tremendous data volumes created
by surveys like COMPLETE.  Presently, she is working closely with
colleagues at Microsoft Research, helping to expand the use of the World
Wide Telescope program.

Goodman also teaches several courses at Harvard, on both astrophysics
and on the display of data, including one called "The Art of Numbers."

Goodman received her undergraduate degree in Physics from MIT in 1984
and a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard in 1989. She held a President's
Fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley from 1989-92,
after which she took up a post as Assistant Professor of Astronomy at
Harvard. In 1997, she received the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize from the
American Astronomical Society for her work on interstellar matter and
became full professor at Harvard in 1999.  She currently serves as Chair
of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science.