I grew up in Seattle, Washington where in spite of the rain, I became very interested in astronomy
through watching the stars and in cosmology after reading the popular science book "The First Three Minutes" by Steven Weinberg. I attended Smith College in Massachusetts and double majored in Physics and Astronomy. I wasn't sure I wanted to go to graduate school so got a job at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore where I worked on astrometry problems. This
convinced me (ironically) to apply to Physics graduate school on the advice that I could always come
back to astronomy from physics. I received my PhD from UCLA in High Energy Particle Physics working at the CERN particle collider. At this time, the field of particle astrophysics was just starting to
grow - using techniques from particle physics to detect particles from space (cosmic rays, gamma rays,
neutrinos and hopefully dark matter). I was perfectly prepared for this field and have worked in it ever since first as a post-doc at the University of Chicago, then as a research astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. My husband, son and I moved to the University of Minnesota in 2010 where I became a faculty member in the School of Physics & Astronomy. I am a member of the VERITAS and CTA gamma-ray observatory collaborations where my main interest is understanding the gamma ray
emission from highly collimated jets of material emanating from active galactic nuclei. I also have a background in public participation in research through my work at the Adler Planetarium where I also co-founded the Zooniverse citizen science platform which attracts over 2 million volunteers worldwide to participate in labeling information through online interfaces.

Read Lucy's professional bio here