About Dr. Emily Rice, PhD

Dr. Emily Rice is an astronomer, professor, and creative science communicator in New York City. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Science & Physics at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York (CUNY), faculty in the physics Ph.D. program at the CUNY Graduate Center, and resident research associate in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). She studies low mass stars, brown dwarfs (sometimes called “failed” stars), and directly-imaged exoplanets by analyzing their spectra and modeling their atmospheres. Her research group, Brown Dwarfs in New York City (BDNYC) has received funding from NASA and the NSF, and she is a co-author on 30 refereed publications. In 2015 Dr. Rice was an inaugural recipient of the Henry Wasser Award for Outstanding Scholarship from the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA in Astronomy & Astrophysics and undergraduate degrees from the University of Pittsburgh in Physics & Astronomy and German. In addition to her research, she co-authored of a suite of labs for introductory college-level astronomy courses called Astronomy Labs: A Concept Oriented Approach, available through Pearson. She frequently gives public presentations, including at the Hayden Planetarium at AMNH, and makes media appearances, produces science parody videos, organizes and hosts Astronomy on Tap events at bars in NYC, and shares astronomy-inspired fashion on the STARtorialist blog.