France Córdova
Broader Impacts Champion
President
Science Philanthropy Alliance
Córdova is being honored because of her role in supporting and advancing the broader impacts criterion while she was NSF Director including speaking at the 2014 Broader Impacts Infrastructure Summit in Arlington and her ongoing role as a President of the Science Philanthropy Alliance.
Dr. France Anne-Dominic Córdova is an American astrophysicist and administrator who was the fourteenth director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and now serves as President of the Science Philanthropy Alliance. Previously she served on the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, and she was President of Purdue University from 2007 to 2012. She worked at the Space Astronomy and Astrophysics Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1979 to 1989, where she also served as Deputy Group Leader. She headed the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University from 1989 to 1993.
In 1993, Córdova became a NASA Chief Scientist. Her scientific career contributions have been in the areas of observational and experimental astrophysics, multi-spectral research on x-ray and gamma ray sources, and space-borne instrumentation. She has published more than 150 scientific papers.
Córdova also previously served as as Vice-Chancellor for Research and a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Chancellor and Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Riverside. As Purdue’s President, she promoted student success and the commercialization of interdisciplinary research. Her administration oversaw the establishment of Purdue’s College of Health and Human Sciences and its Global Policy Research Institute. At the end of her term, Purdue’s trustees credited her with leading the school to record levels of research funding, reputational rankings, and student retention rates.
Born in Paris, France, she attended high school in California before earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford University where she conducted anthropological field work in a Zapotec Indian pueblo in Oaxaca, Mexico. She earned a PhD in Physics from the California Institute of Technology. After her retirement from NSF, she was elected to the Caltech Board of Trustees.