Residence United States Fields Heliophysics | Nationality American Field Heliophysics | |
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Thesis Investigations of Extragalactic Hydroxyl (1987) Alma maters Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Pennsylvania State University Institutions NASA, National Science Foundation, University of Memphis, Rhodes College | ||
Joan T. Schmelz has been a professor of physics at the University of Memphis since 1996. Schmelz's research focus is heliophysics, specifically investigating the coronal heating problem as well as the properties and dynamics of the solar atmosphere. She uses spectroscopic and image data in the X-ray and ultraviolet wavelength ranges obtained from NASA satellites and rockets. She has published over 80 refereed scientific journal articles and authored three books. Dr. Schmelz also was the chair of the American Astronomical Society’s (AAS’s) Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy for 6 years (two terms). Schmelz has recently come under fire for alleged age and disability discrimination at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico
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Education and career
Joan T. Schmelz obtained her bachelor's degree in physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1980 and stayed for an additional two years to complete a master's degree in physics. Her master's thesis was titled "Variability in T Tauri Stars". During her time as a master's student, she won the physics department award for outstanding teaching. She then attended Pennsylvania State University, completing a PhD in astronomy with her dissertation "Investigations of extragalactic hydroxyl".
After completing her PhD, Schmelz worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center where she was part of the operations team for the Solar Maximum Mission Satellite. She worked at NASA for five years before working as an assistant professor at Rhodes College. She held this position for four years before moving to the University of Memphis.
At the University of Memphis, Schmelz is the director of the solar physics lab. To study the coronal heating problem, her lab uses data from the Solar EUV Research Telescope and Spectrograph (SERTS) instrument, SOHO, TRACE and Yohkoh. She is also a frequent visitor to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and was a program officer for the National Science Foundation's Division of Astronomical Sciences.
Joan Schmelz is the deputy director (and the current Acting Director) of Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Promoting women in science
Since the fall of 2013, she has been the program director for the NSF's Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships (AAPF). She also served as the Chair of the American Astronomical Society's Committee on the Status of Women for two terms (a total of six years which ended in August 2015) and a contributor for the Women in Astronomy blog where she has written posts on sexual harassment, unconscious bias, patriarchy, balancing work and life, as well as many other topics relevant to women in astronomy.
In January 2014, she participated in the Northeast Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics by giving a talk on unconscious bias at Penn State. This is a topic she frequently covers in lectures and she often recommends investigating the origins of patriarchy (for example, Merlin Stone's 'When God Was A Woman') to understand the small numbers of women in science.
Besides participating in the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics, she has given many invited talks at Caltech, JPL, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, UT Austin, Space Telescope, the University of Maryland, MIT, the National Science Foundation, and NASA headquarters on Women in Science.
Schmelz plays an active role assisting young women astronomers seeking guidance after facing sexual harassment and other forms of harassment within astronomy. "There’s no office that will keep a confidential complaint [regarding sexual harassment] on file until, for example, they get a second confidential complaint from another person. That’s one of the things I’d like to see going forward. The Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy had been acting like that, and I had been acting like that in a very informal way." Regarding Geoff Marcy's sexual harassment complaints and resignation from Berkeley, Schmelz was quoted in the New York Times: "This should put sexual harassers on notice: No one is too big to fail".