Carolyn Porco: Leader of the Cassini Imaging Team

Carolyn Porco received her PhD from CalTech in 1983 from the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, then joined the faculty of the University of Arizona and was made a member of the Voyager Imaging Team. In 1990 she was selected as the Imaging Team leader for the Cassini-Huygens mission, which is ongoing, and Director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS (CICLOPS). She is also currently a Senior Research Scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In 1991 Porco talked to Natalie Angier at the New York Times for an article about the lack of women in scientific leadership positions:

“Scientists can be like schoolyard toughs,” said Dr. Caroline Porco, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who has been appointed head of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft mission, scheduled to fly past Saturn in the early 21st century. “I grew up as the only girl with four brothers, but still I wasn’t prepared for what I encountered at Stanford when I went there in 1974, as a graduate student. You’d present your results, and somebody would say, ‘How did you get here? Why are you wasting my time? If you had half a brain you could have done that calculation.’ ”

What is more, said Dr. Porco, if she had had the inclination to respond in kind, “the guys would probably say, ‘She’s a pushy bitch.’ ” And Porco does apparently have a reputation for aggressiveness (at least according to this 2004 article).

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🙂 Highly recommend watching the video it’s awesome and Carolyn is a great presenter. You’ll be blown away by what Cassini captured!! It’s pretty awesome.