Skip to main content

Christa Peters-Lidard Maniac Lecture

Personal Photograph

Dr. Christa D. Peters-Lidard is currently the Deputy Director for Hydrosphere, Biosphere, and Geophysics in the Earth Sciences Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. She was a Physical Scientist in the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory from 2001-2015, and Lab Chief from 2005-2012. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Geophysics and a minor in Mathematics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in 1991. She then went on to earn her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Water Resources Program in the Department of Civil Engineering and Operations Research at Princeton University in 1993 and 1997, respectively. Dr. Peters-Lidard was an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology from 1997 to 2001. She is currently the Chief Editor for the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Journal of Hydrometeorology, and has served as an elected member of the AMS Council and Executive Committee. She has also served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Hydrology and Water Resources Research. Her research interests include land-atmosphere interactions, soil moisture measurement and modeling, and the application of high performance computing and communications technologies in Earth system modeling, for which her Land Information System team was awarded the 2005 NASA Software of the Year Award. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and was awarded the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Scientific Commission A Zeldovich Medal in 2004 and the Arthur S. Flemming Award in 2007. She was elected as an AMS Fellow in 2012 and an AGU Fellow in 2018.