Dr. Ashley (Zauderer) VanderLey is Senior Advisor for Facilities in the Division of Astronomical Sciences in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Dr. VanderLey joined the Division of Astronomical Sciences in 2017 as a Program Director. Dr. VanderLey’s responsibilities include work in the Electromagnetic Spectrum Management Unit where she has worked to represent the scientific interests for protection and use of the electromagnetic spectrum both within the United States and internationally. In this role, she represents NSF on NTIA’s Interagency Radio Advisory Committee and its subcommittees, coordinating frequency usage in the National Radio Quiet Zone, and serves as U.S. Head of Delegation on behalf of the State Department to the Radio Astronomy Working Party (7D) of the International Telecommunication Union. Additionally, she served as a spokesperson and subject matter expert on the U.S. delegation for several agenda items at the 2019 World Radio Conference in Egypt. She is a member of the NSF-wide ESM Coordination group and has helped lead NSF efforts to establish the cross-Directorate Spectrum Innovation Initiative (SII).
Dr. VanderLey completed her masters and Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Maryland, College Park and her bachelor’s degree in Astrophysics from Agnes Scott College. Upon completion of her Ph.D., she was a Research Fellow and an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow in the Berger Time Domain Group at Harvard University. Dr. VanderLey’s research specialization is observational radio astronomy applied to some of the most explosive astrophysical transients in the Universe including supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and tidal disruption events of stars around supermassive black holes.
