Dr. Kelly Korreck

Dr. Kelly Korreck is the program scientist for the Living with a Star (LWS) program within the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. She leads the strategic planning and programmatic management of the LWS mission portfolio, which focuses on the Sun-Earth system and its impact on life and society. In this role, she ensures that missions providing predictive understanding of space weather meet technical, budgetary, and scientific milestones to protect technology, communication systems, and human exploration in space.

Before being named program scientist for LWS, Dr. Korreck was a Heliophysics Division program scientist coordinating science outreach and cross-disciplinary solar observations. She led the agency’s award-winning national eclipse efforts for the 2023 and 2024 solar eclipses. The program ranged from science studies of the eclipse to Emmy-award winning broadcasts.

Prior to joining NASA, Dr. Korreck was an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, overseeing program execution and science operations for various solar missions. She also served as the head of science operations and project manager for the Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) suite aboard the Parker Solar Probe, overseeing the development and operational success of the instruments that allowed the spacecraft to “touch the Sun.”  She served as the program scientist for the development of the High-Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) sounding rocket mission. Earlier in her career, she held research and teaching roles focused on shock physics and high-energy particle processes in the heliosphere and beyond.

Dr. Korreck earned her Ph.D. in space physics and a Bachelor of Science in physics and astronomy from the University of Michigan. She received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal as the program manager for NASA’s 2024 Solar Eclipse program.