#SoCaltech: Drew Miles

"My first exposure to suborbital rockets was during my second undergraduate degree at the University of Iowa—my first degree there was actually in business, and then I went back to school later for an astronomy and physics degree after taking some science classes on the side. I never really thought about doing experimental astronomy, and I didn't know what the career path looked like. But I really enjoyed building something that can do science that we otherwise can't really access.

"Today, the experiment side of astronomy still drives me. We build the instruments, and we do this from conception all the way to flight. We design them; we build them; we fly them. Staying in touch with that full life cycle, and staying in touch with the science, in our case the astronomy observations, is what I am most interested in.

"The Roman Technology Fellowships are really important for someone like me on the experimental side because they give us resources to help advance our career. When we try to apply to tenure track positions, we're competing against everyone that's doing astronomy, and we typically are not as productive in terms of publications and science output. The Roman Technology Fellowship was generated as a way to help us, the technology and experimental folks, with additional support and an avenue to go from a postdoc to a permanent position."

Drew Miles, a research assistant professor of physics, is working on the next FIREBall (the Faint Intergalactic-medium Redshifted Emission Balloon) suborbital mission to map ultraviolet light from the faint medium around nearby galaxies. He recently won a NASA Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship in astrophysics, and a grant to develop technology for future NASA missions through the NASA Strategic Astrophysics Technology program.

#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.