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
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]
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].