Joseph E. Aoun, a leader in higher education policy and a renowned scholar in linguistics, is the seventh President of Northeastern University.
President Aoun has strategically aligned the University’s research enterprise with three global imperatives—health, security, and sustainability. Northeastern’s faculty focus on interdisciplinary research, entrepreneurship, and transforming academic research into commercial solutions for the world’s most pressing problems. During President Aoun’s tenure, the University has realized a 189 percent growth in external research funding, along with approximately 1,500 patent applications filed by faculty and students.
Join this New England Aquarium Lecture Series event featuring acclaimed scientist, astronaut, and explorer Dr. Kathy Sullivan. The first American woman to walk in space, Dr. Sullivan is a veteran of three space shuttle missions. In 2020, she made history again by becoming the first woman to visit the deepest known spot in the ocean, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, which is seven miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Dr. Sullivan will share details of her remarkable deep sea expedition and discuss the challenges of exploring an environment that is in some ways harsher and less known than space.
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The Aquarium Lecture Series is presented free to the public through the generosity of the Lowell Institute.
Dr. Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space during NASA’s Space Shuttle Challenger mission in 1984. She completed two additional space flights, helping deploy the Hubble Space Telescope and conducting experiments studying Earth’s atmosphere.
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Her esteemed career includes numerous leadership positions across government, academic, and nonprofit sectors, in addition to military service as a U.S. Naval Reserve oceanography officer. From 2014 until 2017, she served as Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of the National and Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In September 2021, she was appointed to the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
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Dr. Sullivan has won numerous awards and honors, including being inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame and elected into the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She holds a bachelor's degree in earth sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz, a doctorate in geology from Dalhousie University in Canada, and numerous honorary degrees.
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