Julia Roman-Duval

 Julia Roman-Duval is a tenured Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, where she currently holds the position of interim head for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) mission office.

She was born and raised in France, and moved to the USA almost two decades ago to pursue graduate school and a career in astrophysics. She is the mother of three children currently in middle and high school. Other than being fans of science and astronomy, Julia and her family are a very outdoorsy adventurous family. Julia is also an elite endurance athlete, specifically in distance running and triathlon. She qualified for the US marathon Olympic team trials in 2016 and 2020, and has run several marathon world majors with the professional field, finishing 17th in Chicago in 2019.

Julia Roman-Duval spends half of her work time doing research on the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. The ISM is the nebular material composed of gas and dust that fills the space between stars in galaxies. Her long-term goal is to observationally understand the composition and structure of this interstellar gas and dust, and how it influences the formation of stars and the evolution of galaxies. She co-leads a large group of researchers, including students, postdocs, and faculty at STScI  who are all working as a team to advance this field of research.

The other half of her work time is spent supporting the Hubble Space Telescope. She has made critical contributions to the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), a spectrograph instrument onboard Hubble. These contributions include devising new strategies and leading several complex feasibility studies and commissioning programs to extend the lifetime of the COS spectrograph to 2030 and beyond. More recently, she led a team of 25+ scientists and technical staff to implement the recent HST 1000-orbit Director's Discretionary program, ULLYSES, which provided the international scientific community with a comprehensive ultraviolet spectroscopic library of young low and high mass stars in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. She is now the Head of the Hubble Space Telescope Mission Office, where her responsibilities include prioritizing the efforts of science operation staff, setting strategic direction, representing scientific and operational interests with mission partners, and managing the mission’s budget, all to maximize the mission’s scientific return.