15 Facts About Monica Grady

Monica Grady is currently Professor of Planetary and Space Science at the Open University and is the Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University.

Monica Grady is the oldest of eight children and the daughter of teachers.

Monica Grady has formerly been based at the Natural History Museum, where she curated the UK's national collection of meteorites.

Monica Grady has built up an international reputation in meteoritics, publishing many papers on the carbon and nitrogen isotope geochemistry of primitive meteorites, on Martian meteorites, and on interstellar components of meteorites.

Monica Grady was appointed a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society in 2000, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 2012 and a Fellow of the Geochemical Society in 2015.

Monica Grady has been a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society since 1990, and a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland since 1992.

Monica Grady was awarded the Coke Medal of the Geological Society of London in 2016, for her work in science communication.

Monica Grady gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2003, on the subject "A Voyage in Space and Time".

In 2010, Monica Grady returned to Durham, spending 3 months at St Mary's College as a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study Monica Grady was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to space sciences.

In 2014, Monica Grady spoke to BBC News about the aims and the significance of the spacecraft Rosetta.

In July 2019, Monica Grady was awarded an Honorary Doctorate honoris causa by Liverpool Hope University for her work in communication of science and faith; in January 2020, she was installed as its third Chancellor.

Monica Grady is one of the members of Euro-Cares, an EU-funded Horizon2020 project which has the aim of developing a roadmap for a European Sample Curation Facility, designed to curate precious samples returned from Solar System exploration missions to asteroids, Mars, the Moon and comets.

Monica Grady's youngest sister, Dr Ruth Grady, is a Senior Lecturer in microbiology at the University of Manchester.

Monica Grady's husband, Professor Ian Wright, is a planetary scientist at the Open University.

Ian and Monica Grady have one son, Jack Wright, who works in the film industry.