Podcast Guest Biographies

EP. 15: Karin Oberg, phd

Karin Oberg is a professor of Astronomy and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Harvard University. She researches astrochemistry and its impact on planet formation using a combination of methods including laboratory ice experiments, astronomical observations, and theory. She currently serves on the board of the Society of Catholic Scientists.

Öberg received her education at the California Institute of Technology and graduated cum laude in 2005 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry.

She claims that "Caltech was a birth through fire experience into science, which taught [her] to think, to ask questions, and to solve problems as [she] scarce had thought [her] mind capable of."

Following her undergraduate studies, Öberg took up a Ph.D. position at Leiden University in the Netherlands under the supervision of Dr. Ewine van Dishoeck and Dr. Harold Linnartz.

In 2009, After Öberg received her Ph.D., NASA awarded her a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship. Through this funding, she studied the radio astronomical observations of organic molecules in young stars, such as protoplanetary disks and protostars.

Öberg returned to Harvard in July 2013 as an Assistant Professor of Astronomy. Here, she formed the Öberg Astrochemistry Group, where laboratory ice experiments and astrochemistry studies are conducted to address how astrochemically important molecules ultimately form into molecules that can sustain life.