Aparna Venkatesan will lead a discussion on  the increasing privatization of space exploration, impacts of brightening night skies on Indigenous sky traditions including wayfinding, environmental justice in space, and lessons from Maunakea for the stewardship of space as an environment shared by many constituencies.

Suggested Readings

• Nature Astronomy: "Stewardship of space as shared environment and heritage" (ePDF)
• Space.com: "The next chapter of lunar exploration could forever change the moon — and our relationship to it"

Aparna Venkatesan

Aparna Venkatesan is a cosmologist working on a number of research topics including studies of the first stars and quasars in the universe, cosmological reionization, the physical conditions in early-universe galaxies, cosmological element synthesis, and the cosmic microwave background.

She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of San Francisco. Before moving to the Bay Area, she held an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at The University of Chicago, and her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University’s Astronomy Department.

Venkatesan currently serves on a number of local and national committees to increase the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields and astronomy, including the American Astronomical Society’s Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy, and the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy.