Mary K. Hudson

Education and career While in college, Hudson worked for the McDonnell-Douglas Corporation as a mathematician and earned her B.S. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1969. She then worked for the Aerospace Corporation while working on her M.S. degree which she earned from UCLA in 1971.

Research Hudson's interest in space developed as a child raised during the space race who had her own childhood telescope. Starting with her Ph.D. research, Hudson worked on the spread F problem, a phenomenon known to impact the transmission of signals by satellites. the electrostatic shocks they measured accelerate electrons to make the auroras that can be seen at night in high latitudes. Hudson's research on geomagnetic storms, disruptions in the Earth's magnetosphere, establishes the conditions that cause radiation belts to form during these storms. From 2002 until 2013, Hudson co-lead the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling. which has consequences for technology used on Earth. Hudson has also examined the movement of particles in radiation belts, the Van Allen radiation belts, that surround the Earth.

Selected publications

Awards and honors In 1984, Hudson was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and awarded the James B. Macelwane Medal, thereby becoming the first woman to receive the award. and received the James A. Van Allen Space Environments Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2012.