Dr. Mic Bagley Project Scientist for Data, Pipeline, Calibrations and Archives, NASA

Dr. Mic Bagley is an Astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, and serves as the JWST Project Scientist for Data, Pipeline, Calibrations and Archives.

Bagley grew up in Winthrop, MA, a small town near Boston. As an avid reader of science fiction, they have been fascinated with space, astronomy, and physics since early middle school. Bagley graduated from the University of Rochester in New York with a B.S. in Physics and Astronomy in 2010. After undergrad, they worked as a postbac at Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson for two years, spending weeks observing at the many telescopes in the area and learning to work with all kinds of observational data. Bagley got their Ph.D. in Astrophysics at the University of Minnesota in 2018 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin until 2024. At UT Austin, they had the joy of working with some of the first public imaging from JWST, getting a deep appreciation for the exhilaration and challenges that come with processing JWST data.

Bagley is interested in the early universe and how galaxies evolve with time, using deep imaging to detect some of the earliest galaxies to form in the universe, and deep spectroscopy to learn about the stars, gas, dust, and the strength of the emitted ionizing radiation inside these distant sources. JWST has expanded our understanding of galaxy formation at all cosmic times and has opened the door to countless new questions. One such mystery is the discovery of galaxies and black holes at much earlier times than expected, in some cases just a few million years after the Big Bang. Bagley is especially excited about studying how these galaxies and black holes were able to form so quickly and efficiently.

In their spare time, Bagley still devours science fiction and enjoys biking, baking and playing with their kid.