Maria T. Zuber is the Vice President for Research and the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Zuber has been involved in more than half a dozen NASA planetary missions aimed at mapping the Moon, Mars, Mercury and several asteroids. She currently serves as Principal Investigator of NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Mission. She holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an Sc.M. and Ph.D. from Brown University. She has won numerous awards including the MIT James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, NASA’s Outstanding Scientific Achievement Medal, Distinguished Public Service Medal and Outstanding Public Leadership Medal, as well as the American Geophysical Union Harry H. Hess Medal, the Geological Society of America G.K. Gilbert Award and the American Astronautical Society/Planetary Society Carl Sagan Memorial Award. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Philosophical Society, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geological Society of America, and the American Geophysical Union, where she served as president of the Planetary Sciences Section. In 2004 Professor Zuber served on the Presidential Commission on the Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy. In 2002 Discover magazine named her one of the 50 most important women in science, and in 2008 she was named to the USNews/Harvard Kennedy School List of America’s Best Leaders. In 2013 President Obama appointed Professor Zuber to the National Science Board.