About

Dr. Arianna S. Long is a NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. Her scientific research seeks to understand how the most massive galaxies in the early Universe form, grow, and die. She achieved her Bachelor’s of Science in Applied Mathematics from Towson University, MD with a minor in education and in computer science. After some time as a data analyst in the consulting industry, Dr. Long returned to higher education to achieve her Master’s in Physics as part of the inaugural cohort of the Cal State University, Los Angeles’s new NASA Data Intensive Research and Education Center for STEM (DIRECT-STEM) program. She then went on to pursue her doctoral degree as a Eugene Cota Robles Fellow and a Ford Foundation Fellow at UC Irvine. Dr. Long’s research has been featured in the hard-copy Scientific American magazine, Astrobites, the Starts with a Bang podcast, the Parsing Science podcast, and more. For her writing, she was recently awarded the National Academies of Science Excellence in Science Communication Award and featured in the 2022 Best American Science and Nature Writing

Dr. Long is also a leader and champion of efforts focused on building more equitable STEM spaces. She is currently the Chief Programming Officer of the VanguardSTEM non-profit organization where she develops and leads mentoring initiatives to support gender minorities of color in STEM. She is co-founder of the UC Irvine Physics & Astronomy Community Excellence (PACE) peer-mentoring program, which was recognized and funded in 2020 by the American Astronomical Society’s National Osterbrock Leadership Program. Through sustained, long-term engagements with non-profits like DreamWakers, she has spoken with over 300 K-12 students from low-income backgrounds. Through her involvement with programs focused on widening participation of marginalized students in STEM, she has directly mentored over 100 BIPOC undergraduates from around the world. For this work and more, she was awarded the UC Irvine campus-wide Excellence in Mentorship Award, invited to speak at the American Physical Society’s National Mentoring Conference as well as the Inclusive Astronomy Conference, nominated for the campus-wide Most Promising Future Faculty Award, and awarded the inaugural school-wide Women in Natural Sciences award.

There is no singular path to become a scientist. Everyone's journey and motivations are personal and unique.

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