Episode 4 - Heliophysics Big Year with Dr. Madhulika (Lika) Guhathakurta, NASA

For the past two decades, Lika has enabled the development of Heliophysics as an integrated scientific discipline from which fundamental discoveries about our universe provide direct societal benefits. As the Lead for the Living With a Star (LWS) program for 16 years since its initiation in 2000 she made possible the flagship missions (e.g. the Solar Dynamics Observatory, Van Allen Probes, Solar Orbiter Collaboration with European Space Agency and Parker Solar Probe), many other missions, including STEREO that would revolutionize our understanding of how the Sun shapes space weather in the solar system. She has been awarded numerous national and international awards, including the Baron Marcel Nicolet Medal for Space Weather and Space Climate, “India’s Most Powerful Women” award by Business Today, India, and the American Geophysical Union Ambassador Award. Lika has championed the growth of FDL since 2017 and remains an indispensable voice in defining challenge areas and the approaches to solving them.