Jesús Maíz-Apellániz

My image of Comet Hale-Bopp, 5 April 1997 (Peguerinos, Spain)

I work for the European Space Agency at the Space Telescope Science Institute here in Baltimore. I’m originally from Spain but got a scholarship to do my first degree at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Physics & Planetary Sciences. After that I did my masters in Arts in Astronomy at Berkeley and went back to Spain to complete my PhD in Astrophysics.

When I was six years old my sister gave me a book about space. I was hooked. I announced to my family that I was going to be a professional astronomer. As the years went past, I did waiver in my ambition. I first wanted to be a doctor and then an inventor – what even that is! But by the time I was 15 my mind was made up to be an astronomer.

Most people just go to a University in their own country. But I suppose I’m a bit weird. I found out from books that the California Institute of Technology had one of the most exciting astronomy courses in the World. So I wanted to go there. My family couldn’t afford to buy me a small telescope let alone fund my education in the USA but they were very supportive about my ambition. I wrote to CalTech and my teachers gave me good references. I won a scholarship. Nobody else I knew did what I did,  but more people do this sort of thing these days. I came to work at the STScI in 1999 and now I’m a permanent member of the ESA staff.

At the moment I’m working on several projects related to massive stars and massive young stellar clusters as well as calibrating instruments on Hubble. Outside of the institute I like photography, reading and watching films. I enjoy hiking and playing racquetball. I also like soccer – my team is Real Sociedad.

See my homepage: http://nemesis.stsci.edu/~jmaiz/