Maria Zuber, PhD, is an American geophysicist and planetary scientist. She is the EA Griswold Professor of Geophysics at at MIT, and served as vice president for research from 2013 to 2024. Zuber’s research is focused on the structure and tectonics of planets. She was the first woman to lead a robotic planetary mission for NASA, and also the first woman to lead a science department at MIT. Zuber has held scientific leadership roles on ten NASA missions, most notably NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, whose goal was to create a detailed map of the moon’s gravitational field and internal structure. In January 2021, Zuber was appointed co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
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