Biographical note

Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock PhD is a space scientist whose passion is presenting science to a general audience and demonstrating that you ‘don’t need a brain the size of a small planet’ to understand, participate in and enjoy science.

She studied at Imperial College London, where she obtained her degree in Physics and her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. She has spent her career making novel, bespoke instrumentation in both the industrial and academic environments including working on the James Webb Space Telescope and various satellite monitoring climate change.

To further share her passion for science, in 2004 Maggie founded Science Innovation Ltd. Through this company she conducts public engagement activities, sharing her love of space and encouraging underrepresented communities to take up STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. To date Maggie has directly spoken to well over 600,000 people around the world. As well as public speaking she is a Bafta-nominated TV presenter, co-hosting the world’s longest-running science television program The Sky at Night.

She is also an author, and her recent children’s book Am I Made of Stardust? won the Royal Society book prize. Maggie also won the Institute of Physics gold medal for exceptional services to science education and physics communication; she was the President of the British Science Association and is the current Chancellor of the University of Leicester. She was made a Dame in the 2023 New Year’s Honours list.