The UK-born physicist Nicola Fox has become head of science at NASA, one of the highest profile positions at the US space agency. Fox takes  over from Thomas Zurbuchen as NASA’s associate administrator for the science mission directorate after he stepped down at the end of 2022 following six years as the agency’s chief scientist.

Born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire in 1969, Fox graduated from Imperial College London with a BSc in physics in 1990. After an MSc in telematics and satellite communications from the University of Surrey, she returned to Imperial to do a PhD in space and atmospheric physics, which she completed in 1995.

Fox then moved to the US, doing a postdoc at the Goddard Space Flight Center before heading to the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at the Johns Hopkins University in 1998. As a research scientist at Johns Hopkins, she studied various aspects of the geospace impact of coronal mass ejection events from the Sun.

Fox later became chief scientist for heliophysics at APL as well as the project scientist for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe – NASA’s first mission to “touch” the Sun, which launched in August 2018. Fox joined NASA headquarters in 2018 as the director of the heliophysics division, where her portfolio also included NASA’s space weather research programme.

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NASA’s science mission directorate has five separate divisions focusing on earth science, planetary science, heliophysics, astrophysics, and biological and physical sciences. In her new role, Fox is responsible for over 100 NASA missions as well as an annual budget of $7.8bn. She is also only the second women to hold the position after astronaut Mary Cleave who was associate administrator for science from 2005 to 2007.

“It’s the role of a lifetime, I could not be more excited,” Fox told BBC Radio 4. “You don’t really dream of working for NASA, it certainly doesn’t seem like it’s something that could be a reality.”

“As the director of our heliophysics division, Nicky was instrumental in expanding the impacts and awareness of NASA’s solar exploration missions and I look forward to working with her as she brings her talents, expertise, and passion to her new role,” noted NASA administrator Bill Nelson.