Dr. C. Alex Young serves as the Associate Director for Science Communication in the Heliophysics Science Division (HSD) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where he leads strategies to effectively communicate the division’s research and mission. A vital part of his role is developing tools, resources, and training that enable the NASA workforce to share heliophysics discoveries with broad audiences. He also collaborates with scientists within the division to showcase and support their work, partnering with groups across the Center, the Agency, and beyond.
In addition, Dr. Young plays a key role in advancing HSD’s data infrastructure. Leveraging his expertise in both data science and communication, he works with the Heliophysics Digital Resource Library (HDRL) and the Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office (M2MSWAO) to ensure data are accessible, transparent, and actionable. His efforts include integrating modern large language models (LLMs) and generative AI solutions into existing workflows to enhance knowledge sharing, data accessibility, and collaboration across research teams. Through HDRL, he gathers and applies user feedback to tailor services that are cost-effective and beneficial to researchers. Meanwhile, his programming and data skills are strengthening M2MSWAO’s engagement with stakeholders via a dynamic data dashboard—one that will continue to expand as new solar system–wide data, including from the Moon, Mars, and other NASA missions, become available. By spearheading these initiatives, Dr. Young supports the evolving needs of heliophysics research, national security, and critical infrastructure.
In graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, Dr. Young studied the high-energy astrophysics of cosmic gamma-ray bursts and gamma-ray solar flares. He then joined the NASA/ESA SOHO mission after graduate school as a Solar Astrophysicist with the Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT). He also served as a staff scientist for the STEREO mission and as a Chief Observer for Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope. Working in this area grew his interest in image processing, which he combined with his love of statistics and data analysis. It was this with the help of some of his colleagues that led to his establishment of the Solar Image Processing Workshops or SIPWork. Over the years, Young has helped organize and run five workshops and edited three special topic Solar Physics journal volumes on Solar Image Processing. Part of what he enjoys about data analysis topics is the sharing of knowledge with the solar and astrophysics communities. This has led to his participation with the California Harvard Astrostatisics Collaboration (CHASC) and serve as a member and current chair of the American Astronomical Society's (AAS) Astrostatistics and Astroinformatics Working Group.
Dr. Young's passion for sharing knowledge has also been fueled by giving public lectures, television and radio interviews for NASA/TV, and participation in several documentaries. He co-led NASA's public engagement efforts for the 2017 total solar eclipse. Dr. Young also led the NASA Heliophysics Education Activation Team (HEAT) and its earlier incarnations from 2015 to 2021.