Taft Armandroff - Director
McDonald Observatory
The University of Texas at Austin

Taft joined UT Austin in 2014 as Director of McDonald Observatory and Professor of Astronomy. Prior to arriving at UT, Armandroff served as Director of the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Armandroff holds a B.A. in astronomy from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in astronomy from Yale University.

Armandroff also serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization, which is developing a 25-meter-class telescope in Chile for use by UT Austin astronomers and those from 13 other partners.

Katie Kizziar - Assistant Director for Education and Outreach
McDonald Observatory
The University of Texas at Austin

Katie Kizziar is the McDonald Observatory Assistant Director for Education and Outreach. Her background includes roles as an Associate Director at Thinkery, Austin’s Children’s Museum, various UT-Austin STEM education initiatives with the Women in Engineering Program, Environmental Science Institute, and UTeach Engineering. She also served as Director of the Technology & Education Executive Council for Skillpoint Alliance, an intermediary non-profit organization focused on education and workforce development in Central Texas.

Katie is a proud graduate of UT-Austin, with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and a Master of Public Affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs. She currently resides at the Observatory atop the Davis Mountains with her husband and silly dogs.

Caroline studies exoplanet atmospheres of all shapes and sizes. She simulates the atmospheres of planets using theoretical models, in order to measure the properties of atmospheres from afar, including terrestrial planets, super Earths, gas giants, brown dwarfs, and everything in between.

Caroline received a Bachelor's degree in physics and in Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before joining UT Austin's faculty in 2018, Caroline was a NASA Sagan postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.