Associate Director for Science
Space Telescope Science Institute
Neill Reid is an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. He received a B.Sc. in astronomy from St. Andrews and a Ph.D. from Edinburgh University. His research centres on Galactic structure, notably low mass stars, brown dwarfs and the initial stellar mass function. He has published more than 240 refereed papers, and, with Suzanne Hawley, is the author of the primary textbook on the subject of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. He was the first to highlight the important implications of Hipparcos subdwarf parallax measurements for globular cluster distances and ages, and was a key member of the 2MASS Rare Objects team that characterized the frequency and intrinsic properties of brown dwarfs. His current research focuses on the Galactic demographics of exoplanet host stars. While at Caltech, he was the Project Scientist for the second Palomar Sky Survey. As Associate Director of Science at STScI, he is responsible for both the internal science infrastructure and external science policies, including oversight of the HST TAC process and development of JWST science policies and peer review. He has served on many review panels, including NASA’s ∆ review for the WISE mission, reviews of the European Southern Observatory OPC (time allocation process) Working Group, the Astro2010 Ground-based OIR Program Prioritization Panel, and the 2014 NASA Senior Review of the Chandra X-ray Mission.