Thomas Zurbuchen

Thomas H. Zurbuchen is a Swiss-American astrophysicist who served as NASA's Associate Administrator for Science Mission Directorate from October 2016 through December 2022 — the longest tenure in that position in NASA's history. ^[1]

Before NASA, Zurbuchen was a professor at the University of Michigan's Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, where his research focused on solar physics and the heliosphere. He led instrument teams on NASA's Ulysses and Messenger missions and was a co-investigator on the Solar Probe Cup instrument aboard Parker Solar Probe. ^[2]

As Associate Administrator for Science, Zurbuchen oversaw the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the Perseverance Mars rover, the DART asteroid-deflection mission, and the Lucy mission to the Jupiter trojans. In June 2022 he announced — at a National Press Club briefing — that NASA would convene an independent study team to evaluate unidentified anomalous phenomena from a scientific standpoint, the first formal NASA effort to do so. ^[3] He selected David Spergel to chair the team; their final report was delivered three months after Zurbuchen's departure from NASA, in September 2023.

Since leaving NASA, Zurbuchen has joined ETH Zurich as professor and director of ETH Zurich Space, a new initiative consolidating the university's space research. ^[4]