More About Me

I am a Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Haverford College, PA, USA. My office can be found in the Strawbridge Observatory by the Athletic fields on the Haverford Campus. See my Official Haverford Profile

I am the Principle Investigator for Galaxy Zoo (formerly Project Scientist ~2010-2021) and a lot of my research time is spent combining classifications from this project with other data to study galaxy evolution. I have also been involved in several other related Zooniverse Projects, and I was a member of the Advisory Board for the REINFORCE project, which has EU funds to support involvement with citizen science.

I was the Spokesperson for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey ( SDSS-IV 2014-2022) – for my science I’m most interested in data from the MaNGA survey part of SDSS-IV.  I ran Galaxy Zoo: 3D to generate features masks for MaNGA, and also the HI-MaNGA survey of 21cm (radio) followup of MaNGA galaxies. SDSS has been a big part of my career. I was a member of SDSS 2008-2022 (across both SDSS-III and -IV).

I served as the Co-Chair of the AAS Committee on Education (2021-2023), and was a member of the committee 2019-2023. I have also served on the AAS Nominating Committee (2020-2022), and the Annie Jump Canon Award Committee.

I am a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Radio Frequencies (CORF; 2020-2026; Co-Chair 2025-2026) have also served as an expert on the US Delegation to the World Radio Communications (WRC) Working Party 7D (WP7D) for Radio Astronomy. I have also been on the NRAO/GBT User Committee Twice (2008-2012; 2021-2025; I was Chair 2023). I was a member of the Nancy Roman Space Telescope Advisory Committee (RSTAC; 2023) and the Roman Science User Panel (RSUP; 2025-) .

Over my career, I’m grateful for funding from NSF (via the KNAC REU), a Google Faculty Research Award, SEPnet, The Leverhulme Trust, and The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation. I was recently delighted to be awarded three (!) grants, one from NSF (for GBT Observations of MaNGA galaxies; with Dave Stark, JHU) and two from NASA (related to Galaxy Zoo with Roman Space Telescope and Euclid Space Telescope, involving collaborators from STScI and MN respectively).

You might be interested in reading my popular science books: “Astronomers Library“, “30s Universe” (co-authored with Charles Liu, and Sevil Salur) or “30s Space Travel” (co-authored with Charles Liu, and Allen Liu).

You can follow me on Blue Sky @KarenLMasters, or read my science related blog posts. I also post on Instagram sometimes

Brief Biograpy

(you can find my full academic CV on my official Haverford Profile)