Dr. Meg Urry

Biography

Meg Urry is the Israel Munson Professor of Physics and Director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. She has served as the Chair of the Physics Department at Yale from 2007 to 2013 and is a past president of the American Astronomical Society from 2013 to 2017. Professor Urry received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and her B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from Tufts University. Her scientific research focuses on active galaxies and their host accreting supermassive black holes. She has published over 330 refereed research articles in significant areas of astronomy, notably on supermassive black holes and galaxies. Prof. Urry is a Fellow of several prestigious societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She has received numerous awards for her contributions to science and education, including an honorary doctorate from Tufts University and the Edward Bouchet Leadership Award from Yale University. She has been instrumental in increasing the participation of women and minorities in STEM fields and has played a key role in educational advancements, including creating a “flipped” classroom version of introductory Physics at Yale for underserved high school students. In recent years, her research group has adopted machine learning techniques to study galaxy properties and spectral energy distributions, collaborating with researchers around the world.

Research Interests

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Awards