Rate My Professor Fiona Harrison

Fiona Harrison is the Harold A. Rosen Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and holder of the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair in the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy, which she chaired from 2015 to 2025. She obtained her A.B. in Physics, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1985 and her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. Harrison began her career at Caltech as a Robert A. Millikan Prize Research Fellow from 1993 to 1995, advanced to Assistant Professor of Physics from 1995 to 1999 and Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy from 1999 to 2001, Associate Professor from 2001 to 2005, Professor from 2005 to 2013, and has held her current professorship since 2013.

Harrison's research in Space Science centers on observational and experimental high-energy astrophysics. Her group investigates black holes across mass scales, neutron stars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and ultraluminous X-ray sources using facilities like Chandra, XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, and ground-based telescopes. As Principal Investigator of NASA's NuSTAR mission, she has advanced studies of supermassive black hole growth and supernova nucleosynthesis. Key contributions include developing novel X-ray optics and detectors for future missions such as UVEX. Notable publications encompass the NuSTAR instrument paper (Harrison et al., ApJ 2013), kilonova observations from GW170817 (Evans et al., Science 2017), asymmetric explosion evidence in SN1987A (Boggs et al., Nature 2015), and titanium-44 mapping in Cassiopeia A (Grefenstette et al., Nature 2014). Harrison's leadership extends to co-chairing the National Academies' Decadal Survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics and testifying before Congress. Her impact is recognized through awards including the 2020 Hans A. Bethe Prize (APS), 2015 Bruno Rossi Prize (AAS), 2016 Harrie Massey Medal (COSPAR), 2022 Mohler Prize (University of Michigan), election to the National Academy of Sciences (2014), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2014), and fellowships in APS (2012), AAS (2020), and Royal Astronomical Society (2015).