Tuttle was born and raised in Santa Cruz,[6] studied physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and graduated with a B.Sc in 2001.[7] From 2001 to 2002, she worked for Add-Vision in Scotts Valley as a research scientist,[7] and was part of the team that built the first screen-printed polymer light emitting diodes.[8]
Tuttle received a M.Sc and M.Phil in astronomy from Columbia University in 2006 and 2007,[9] and obtained her Ph.D in 2010,[7] working with David Schiminovich on the Faint Intergalactic medium Redshifted Emission Balloon (FIREBall).[3][4][5] Tuttle built the world's first fiber fed ultraviolet spectrograph, which launched on FIREBall in 2009.[5][10]
Research and career
FIREBall (Faint Intergalactic Redshifted Emission Balloon), an experiment aimed at measuring emission from the intergalactic and circumgalactic medium in the ultraviolet, during launch
Tuttle's research applies novel hardware approaches to spectrograph instrumentation design, particularly aimed to isolate star formation regulation in galaxies through emission and infall from the interstellar medium.[11]
During her Ph.D. at Columbia, Tuttle built the spectrograph for FIREBall, a balloon-borne telescope that is coupled to an ultraviolet spectrograph and designed to discover the intergalactic medium (IGM) in emission.[12][10] The FIREBall spectrograph built by Tuttle was the world's first fiber fed ultraviolet spectrograph and placed upper constraints on IGM emission.[5][10]
Nine of Tuttle's VIRUS spectrograph units awaiting testing for later installation on the Hobby Eberly Telescope.
Tuttle served as the lead for the Hobby–Eberly Telescope's VIRUS detector from 2010 until 2012, where she prototyped, finalized and characterized the VIRUS spectrograph.[13][14][15][16][17] The instrument consists of 156 spectroscopic channels fed by 34944 fiberoptic channels, covering a 22 arcminute field of view.[18] Tuttle and her colleagues' current astrophysics work still utilizes VIRUS data.[19]
In 2016 she joined the University of Washington as an assistant professor.[11] As of May 2019, Tuttle was leading the recommissioning of the KOSMOS spectrograph for the Apache Point Observatory, an instrument originally stationed at Kitt Peak Observatory.[11][20]
Tuttle was a board member and hotline operator for the Lilith Fund until 2016, a reproductive-rights nonprofit that provides Texas women with financial support for obtaining abortions.[29][30][31] She currently serves on the board of Kadima,[32] a Seattle-based Reconstructionist Jewish community.
Her 2015 response to Tim Hunt's statements about women in the laboratory drew international coverage and was featured on BuzzFeed.[33][34] In an interview with Chanda Prescod-Weinstein during the buildup to the 2017 March for Science, The Washington Post cited a group statement by Tuttle, Prescod-Weinstein and Joseph Osmundson on The Establishment.[35][36] Their article entitled "We Are The Scientists Against A Fascist Government" called for greater participation of scientists in politics and compared the political situation in the United States to early-1930s Germany.[36]
She has produced numerous studies on the gender bias within astrophysics, including one published in Nature in 2017 which found women's 1st author papers receive 10% fewer citations than similar papers led by male 1st authors.[37] She furthermore emphasizes the importance of supporting scientists from underrepresented groups.[38]
^Hill, Gary J.; Tuttle, Sarah E.; Vattiat, Brian L.; et al. (9 August 2016). "VIRUS: First deployment of the massively replicated fiber integral field spectrograph for the upgraded Hobby-Eberly Telescope". In Evans, Christopher J; Simard, Luc; Takami, Hideki (eds.). Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy VI. Vol. 9908. pp. 99081H. Bibcode:2016SPIE.9908E..1HH. doi:10.1117/12.2231064. S2CID125982527. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
^ ab"Sarah Tuttle". user.astro.columbia.edu. Archived from the original on 1 July 2018. Retrieved 2 July 2018.
^Brinkworth, Carolyn; Skaer, Allison Byrd; Prescod-Weinstein, Chanda; Teske, Johanna; Tuttle, Sarah (5 October 2016). "Building an Inclusive AAS – The Critical Role of Diversity and Inclusion Training for AAS Council and Astronomy Leadership". arXiv:1610.02916 [astro-ph.IM].
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