In 2020, Imara joined the University of California, Santa Cruz as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy.
13 Facts About Nia Imara
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Nia Imara received her bachelor's degree from Kenyon College in 2003, majoring in mathematics and physics.
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Nia Imara moved to the University of California, Berkeley for her postgraduate studies, and in 2010 she became the first African-American woman to earn a PhD in astrophysics at University of California, Berkeley.
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Nia Imara's dissertation was on The Formation and Evolution of Giant Molecular Clouds and was supervised by Leo Blitz.
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From 2014 to 2017, Nia Imara was the inaugural postdoctoral fellow in the Future Faculty Leaders program at Harvard University.
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Nia Imara used the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope, the Robert C Byrd Green Bank Telescope, to conduct her research.
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Nia Imara works with the Banneker Institute at Harvard, and is a member of the Breakthrough Starshot research team.
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Nia Imara's work investigates the structure and evolution of stellar nurseries in both the Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies throughout the universe, and she has developed a model that connects galaxy mass, star formation rates and dust temperatures.
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In Fall 2020, Imara joined the faculty in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Together with Rosanne Di Stefano, Nia Imara proposed a method for detecting exoplanets in X-ray binary star systems.
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Nia Imara founded the Equity and Inclusion Journal Club at Harvard University in 2018 which was originally co-organized with Dr Anna Pancoast.
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Nia Imara has visited South Africa and Ghana to teach and advocate in programs designed to increase diversity in astronomy and other STEM areas.
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In 2020, Nia Imara founded Onaketa, an organization that connects students from underserved communities of color with free math and science tutoring.