UA prof wants to teach as many people as she can about space. A prestigious fellowship will help

Among the more than 200 recipients of this year’s Guggenheim Fellowship are three Arizona professors: one at ASU and two at the University of Arizona.

One of those is Erika Hamden — she’s an astrophysics professor and director of the University of Arizona Space Institute. She also posts videos about her work and all things space on Instagram, where she has about 128,000 followers.

Hamden joined The Show to talk about all of this, and we started with what she likes to do within astrophysics.

Full conversation

ERIKA HAMDEN: So first I like building things. Like, I discovered in college that there was a job where you could be like the person that builds the telescope. You don't have to just go to the telescope, you can actually like build it, build instruments for it, build cameras for it. And so that's how I primarily identify as like a telescope builder.

But in terms of, you know, what's happening out in space, I'm really interested in the process of formation. Like, I want to know how you go from just like hydrogen formed in the Big Bang to a galaxy, and then how you get hydrogen in a galaxy and how it forms a star. And ultimately I'm trying— I like really want to know like how did our galaxy get here? How did our star get here? How did we get here?

So a lot of my observations are of extremely faint things, because I'm not looking at stars or galaxies, I'm looking at hydrogen out in space.

MARK BRODIE: That might become something at some point.

ERIKA HAMDEN: Yes, that will one day — if it works really hard — will become a star.

MARK BRODIE: You're asking the big questions here.

ERIKA HAMDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: What's that like on a day-to-day basis?

ERIKA HAMDEN: It's really fun. It's also frustrating. In some sense, it gives me like a lot of perspective because these things are so huge and so far away. And also, it's like the formation of things is inevitable. So, for me, it like takes all the pressure off.

Like, I'll be thinking about galaxies and then feel like, OK, well, my day isn't really that bad. Like, it's fine. Stars will still form even if I think that there's something bad happening on Earth. Like, it just puts into perspective how little we are. And so, so on a day-to-day basis, I think it's good.

It's also, for me, sometimes it's stressful like trying to do something new, and like, is this the right thing? And it's actually very similar to making art, I think, in that you have to really have the courage of your convictions to say like, "No, I want to do it this way." And then see what people think.

MARK BRODIE: Are you somebody who like growing up as a kid, did you know that you wanted to do something like this?

ERIKA HAMDEN: Oh, yeah. I mean, I've been into space since I learned that space was a thing.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So, probably pretty young then, right?

ERIKA HAMDEN: Yeah, I think I was like six or seven. And ... I remember learning about the Big Bang. I learned about — I read in our encyclopedia, because it was the '80s and it was like a physical object.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Of course.

ERIKA HAMDEN: I remember looking in the back of the encyclopedia, and there was a map of the known universe, and I can like still picture how the map looked in my head.

MARK BRODIE: Wow.

ERIKA HAMDEN: And I was just like, "This is incredible. This is the best thing that has ever existed." And then I was always trying to talk someone into taking me to the library so I could take out books about space. I like read every book about space in the library.

I learned how to program the VCR so I could record PBS shows about space and then like watch them later. And yeah, I was just super into it. And now when I run into people from high school, they're like, "Oh my God, you're doing what you always wanted." It's really sweet, actually.

MARK BRODIE: Well, I wonder if that helps explain why you seem so passionate about making Instagram videos and trying to explain what you do to people who are not scientists. That you as a 6- or 7-year-old was really getting into it, and I wonder if that maybe says something about why you're doing that now.

ERIKA HAMDEN: Oh, yeah. I mean, my 6-year-old self would have loved my 43-year-old self's videos.

Yeah, I mean, I — partly I do it because I think space is so — I still think it is the best thing I've ever seen, and I still have that sense of wonder, and I just like love it so much. I like want to go up to people on the street and be like, "Oh my God, do you know we live in a galaxy? Like, come on."

And I also do think that scientists have a duty to talk about their work to the public and that some of the societal problems that we have now, I think, are because scientists have really retreated from public life. Sometimes because they've been forced to, but also I think it's just a feeling of like, "Oh, well, I'm just going to do my work and what everyone else does is up to them."

But I think that that's not how science should be. Science should be like in the public, with people, talking about the process.

I think one of the things I noticed during COVID was people were really upset when guidelines changed. And in science, you get new information, you change your theory, you change your view, you adapt. And I think people think that science is like a checklist of items that we know, which are the truth — I'm making like air quotes.

But in fact, it's like science is this iterative process to get closer and closer to something, but you're never really going to have the exact perfect model of the universe. So, I like to talk about the process a little bit or like what we used to think and what we think now to kind of show how it is supposed to change.

And then I also think — I'm like such an optimist and an idealist, really — that I like think that anybody can learn anything if they have the right teacher and if they have the time and the space to kind of grapple with a subject. And so part of it is like, I think that someone that's interested in space can learn general relativity even if they think they're not a math person. So part of it is like trying to live up to that ideal.

MARK BRODIE: Do you find that partly what you're trying to do is sort of help science — I don't want to say like reclaim prestige. But as you referenced, there's been so much questioning of science and scientists, especially since the pandemic. Do you see your videos as maybe a way of trying to demystify what scientists are doing and help people sort of realize, "Hey, no, this is how science works. Like things change, then we learn things, we change things."

ERIKA HAMDEN: Yeah. And, yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. And also that scientists are also people.

That it's not some like nefarious group. It's just like a bunch of nerds working on things. And I think it's actually incredibly powerful to say like, "Oh no, I know these things." So, that's something that I want people to feel like they can assess.

Like in 2025, I had a sequence of videos that was "In 2025, we're thinking critically," and it was about like different types of critical thinking or like how to recognize fallacies. And a lot of it is just like paying attention and thinking about incentives of the people that you're hearing something from and trying to be a little more critical and skeptical in a like, in a positive way, not in a "Earth is flat" way.

MARK BRODIE: Am I right that you would like to do more than like look at space through a telescope? You actually want to go up there?

ERIKA HAMDEN: Go to space and look at it with my eyes.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. You really want to do that?

ERIKA HAMDEN: Yes. Yeah, I've wanted to be an astronaut since I was also a little kid when I learned about space and then I learned that there was a group of people who got to go there. I was like, "That's got to be me."

MARK BRODIE: OK.

ERIKA HAMDEN: There's always been a little bit of a tension, actually, for me, because um, if I were just going to follow the number-one route, I would have like gone to a military academy, like been a test pilot, applied like that way, which is still a route that a lot of people do. And I remember talking to my parents about going to a military academy, and two of my mom's brothers had gone to the Naval Academy.

And my parents were like, "You have to go to the best school you can get into, and if that is a military academy then great, go. But we're not going to let you only apply to those places." So then, in the end I went to MIT, actually, because I also thought like, well, MIT makes a lot of astronauts, so that's a good alternative.

MARK BRODIE: And a pretty good school.

ERIKA HAMDEN: A pretty good school. And I was like really into like, obviously, a lot of technical things. So, I was like, OK, go to MIT, do aerospace engineering, learn how to build rockets, and then become an astronaut. Like, this is a great and detailed plan.

And then, of course, I get to MIT, and I dropped out in the first semester, actually, because I like really hated it, and I had a lot of like growing to do, But I dropped out. I worked at a Borders, took classes at the local college where my dad actually taught physics, and then I reapplied to college and I ended up going to Harvard.

MARK BRODIE: Also a pretty decent school.

ERIKA HAMDEN: Also pretty good, down the street. And I was like, well, I can't major in engineering here because if I wanted to do engineering, I really should have stayed at MIT. But Harvard had and has a fantastic astronomy department, just like the science. And so that's what I ended up doing.

And I had thought like, a lot of people that make it very far in the application process, they like spend a winter in Antarctica, they do these very extreme things to kind of show that they can handle the environment.

But for me, I had felt like, OK, well, what I actually want is to do this work really at a high level. And if I go to Antarctica for a year, I'd be working on someone else's project, and I don't want to do that. I want to want to work on my project.

MARK BRODIE: Ah, OK.

ERIKA HAMDEN: So I think when I look back on it, I'm like, oh, there's stuff I could have done differently that maybe would have made me a better astronaut candidate, but I'm also like, well, I wouldn't change it, probably.

But I would love to go — like I was so thrilled to watch the Artemis II mission, and I had the YouTube channel on like the entire time. And the day that they did the flyby of the moon, I was like looking at it the whole day and like watching the moon get bigger in the field of view.

And around like 3 p.m. that day, I was like, "Man, I haven't gotten anything done today. Like, what have I been doing?" And I realized, oh, I've just been watching the mission.

MARK BRODIE: Wow. Yeah. That’s astrophysicist Erika Hamden, director of the University of Arizona Space Institute and a member of the 2026 class of Guggenheim fellows; more of our conversation in just a moment.

University of Arizona Communications

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MARK BRODIE: Let’s return now to my conversation with Erika Hamden, an astrophysicist and Director of the University of Arizona Space Institute. She was recently named a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow and I asked what that means to her.

ERIKA HAMDEN: It's a huge honor. It was honestly a surprise because I apply for stuff all the time. Like, I'm writing proposals, I'm like, "Oh, I'll just apply to this thing, like, see what happens." And most of the time it doesn't work out.

And I've gotten very used to getting the emails that is like, "Oh, sorry, we went with someone else." And I'm like, "Oh, well."

And so I saw the email from them, and I was like, another rejection. And I click on it and it's like, "Oh, congratulations."

MARK BRODIE: Oh man.

ERIKA HAMDEN: So, that was cool because I was like, "Oh, wow." Um, and actually, that was also funny because that application — as I get older, I think this is true for everyone, you just become like more of yourself.

And so when I was writing the proposal or whatever the document is, I was like, I'm just going to be my most deranged self and write this. Like, the opening sentence is that I'm a persistence predator of my dreams because every day I wake up and I'm like, just going to get a little closer, a little closer. I like, I'm relentless.

And then later, I went back to read it and I was like, "Should I edit that? Should I like soften this?" Because the whole thing is like that. And I was like, "No, I'm just going to be — this is like maximally me. I'm just going to send it to them and they can like it or they can not like it."

MARK BRODIE: Seems they liked it.

ERIKA HAMDEN: So, they liked it, yeah. So, which I've learned a terrible lesson now, which is like I'm just going to be like my most [laughs] crazy self in in everything that I write. But it's really—it's such an honor because the Guggenheim has been around for so long. It's a hu- we're the 101st class of fellows. They provide such great support and they have such a strong emphasis on the arts.

But it's unique in that a lot of fellowships are like just for artists or just for a scientist and this is actually for both. It's like people who are doing creative work in many different fields. So, there's like people who are working in the humanities, all different types of art, and then science. And it's just a very, it feels very like forward-thinking and open.

MARK BRODIE: Do you see what you do in some ways as art? And this is the second time in this conversation you've mentioned something related to art. And I'm just thinking about, you know, going through, you know, buildings at UA that have people who do what you do and there are photos all over the walls of the beautiful images from Hubble or Webb or other telescopes. I wonder if if in some way you see what you do as art.

ERIKA HAMDEN: So my view of art like for myself is that it is the creative act that you are compelled to do. And maybe you don't even really know why. Like, people sometimes ask why I do what I do, I'm like, "I don't know, the folds in my brain, that's what they want. I like just have to do what they want."

And I think science is actually a very creative field. Like, you have to imagine something that you don't already know. You have to come up with something new, you have to like figure out how to get your brain around it.

But then a lot of other parts of the of like academia are very creative. Like, I write all these proposals and to me, writing a proposal for a new telescope concept is like an act of creation. I'm imagining like the way that things could be and if we had this telescope, we could look at this, we could answer this question, we can do these cool things.

And then you write these proposals and you send them out into the world to be criticized by the review panel, and you don't know how it will be received. And the only thing that you can do is make something that to you feels like the best possible version and then like how it is received is dependent on everybody else.

And so for a lot of my work, I feel like I'm creating this piece of art and like sending it out. And I don't know if the critics will like it, but I have to do it.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Well, that sounds very much like a what I would imagine an artist feels as they finish a piece of their work and show it to a bunch of strangers.

ERIKA HAMDEN: And it's like, "This is what's in my heart." But what's in my heart is like telescopes and and figures, instead of like a painting. But I actually do think it comes from the same kind of impulse.

MARK BRODIE: So how will this this honor help you? How will it impact your work? Will it allow you to do things that that you've maybe wanted to do for a for a while?

ERIKA HAMDEN: So it will help me do things I've wanted to do for a while. Like one of the projects that I described was the sensors that I'm working on that's like the light sensor at the heart of the telescope. And I've always been interested in that as a technology because as sensors improve over history, our understanding of the universe improves, and that like the new technology applied to astronomy gives you incredible discoveries.

And so, I'm like, "Oh, I want to make new sensors because then 10 years from now, we're going to find out some crazy thing about the universe."

So it's the project I described was like developing sensors and I'm doing that on campus. But the the fellowship also gives you funding that is kind of not directed. And I and I want to use that to think about I like have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do the next couple of years, maybe five years, but I want to think longer and like what can I do with that? How can I use the space that it kind of buys me to like think about the the long-term plan?

MARK BRODIE: Well, that's interesting.

ERIKA HAMDEN: Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Erika Hamden, the director of the Space Institute at the University of Arizona, an astrophysicist there as well and a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Erika, thanks so much for the conversation. I appreciate it.

ERIKA HAMDEN: Thank you for having me.