{"id":15986,"date":"2026-01-06T22:32:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/06\/starstruck\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T22:32:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:32:31","slug":"starstruck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/06\/starstruck\/","title":{"rendered":"Starstruck"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Few people, if any, contemplate stars\u2014celestial or cinematic\u2014the way Aomawa Shields does.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An astronomer and astrobiologist, Shields explores the potential habitability of planets beyond our solar system. But she is also a classically trained actor\u2014and that\u2019s helped shape her professional trajectory in unexpected ways.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, Shields is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, where she oversees a research team that uses computer models to explore conditions on exoplanets, or planets that revolve around stars other than the sun. But while searching for life many light-years away is her day job, creative endeavors round out her purpose on Earth.<\/p>\n

In 2023 Shields published a memoir, Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe<\/em>. She has started an influential educational program that encourages young girls to explore space, given a hugely popular TED Talk<\/a> about how we\u2019ll find life on other planets, and won a string of prestigious academic awards, honors, and grants. She also plays the violin, cooks, practices yoga, and is a mom. And as what she calls a \u201crest leader\u201d\u2014a professional proponent of slowing down\u2014Shields has somehow managed the seemingly impossible: She makes time.<\/p>\n

Her unorthodox path began on the screen, in the realm of make-believe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to become an astronaut. That dream started very early in my life, at the age of 12, after seeing a movie that dramatized kids getting launched into space,\u201d she says, referring to SpaceCamp<\/em>, an \u201980s kids\u2019 comedy about an accidental space shuttle flight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The next bit of cinematic inspiration cemented her interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCharlotte Blackwood was an astrophysicist, and she was very glamorous, too,\u201d Shields says, smiling at how she was captivated by the heroine in Top Gun<\/em>. \u201cThere\u2019s an iconic scene where she\u2019s walking down the aisle between Tom Cruise and other pilot trainees, and she just kind of whips off her glasses and just looks like such a badass.\u201d<\/p>\n

A high-achieving student while growing up in California, Canada, and Massachusetts, Shields made her way to Phillips Exeter Academy, in large part drawn by its state-of-the-art astronomical observatory. Once there, she got pulled into acting in a serious way. \u201cEnter a new dream,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Throughout high school her astronomy and acting aspirations \u201ckind of danced beside each other,\u201d Shields remembers. \u201cBut I held firm to the first one and went to MIT because I understood that it\u2019s the best science school in the country. I learned that at the age of 12\u2014that\u2019s where I\u2019m going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

At MIT, Shields struggled academically at first and took refuge in the creative arts. She was chosen to participate in the Burchard Scholars Program, whose monthly dinner seminars bring faculty members together with students who excel in the arts, social sciences, and humanities. She sang in the a\u00a0cappella group the Muses and performed in lots of plays. At the end of her senior year, she found herself wondering: \u201cDo I go to grad school in acting or astronomy?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThere were a lot of these things that seemed to be aligning\u2014that were telling me: Go back and get that PhD.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The latter won out, but not for long. Shields headed to a graduate program in astronomy at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison. \u201cDuring that year, I had a white male professor tell me to consider other career options, and that was hard to hear,\u201d she says. She remembers thinking, \u201cI\u2019m going to the other dream because clearly someone\u2019s telling me that I don\u2019t belong here. Maybe they\u2019re right.\u201d<\/p>\n

So she applied to UCLA, where she got an MFA in acting, leaving astronomy for more than a decade. But then, when Shields was working odd jobs to supplement her acting gigs, a mentor from her undergraduate years encouraged her to look on a Caltech-operated job website. She saw an opening for a help desk operator at the Spitzer Space Telescope, an infrared telescope that is particularly adept at viewing the formation of young stars\u2014and it only required a bachelor\u2019s degree. \u201cI\u2019d refer the harder questions to the PhDs,\u201d she says. \u201cBut by taking that job, I got to go to astronomy talks again \u2026 This field of exoplanets had just exploded during the time I\u2019d been away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shields had some success in acting, including a part in a film called Nine Lives<\/em>, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. But a big break\u2014and then heartbreak\u2014came after she was cast as the host of the show Wired Science<\/em>, only to lose the job when the producers decided to change presenters. It was a \u201cdevastating moment,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Soon after, she emailed the astrophysicist and science communications luminary Neil deGrasse Tyson, whom she\u2019d been introduced to over email by an astronomer working with the Spitzer Space Telescope, and relayed what had happened. He replied that he\u2019d seen her in the pilot and told her that \u201cwithout a PhD you don\u2019t have that street cred if you want to do science television,\u201d she recalls. Meanwhile, she had applied to NASA\u2019s astronaut candidate program but didn\u2019t make it past the first level. (She did, however, get to play an astronaut in a recent Toyota ad.) \u201cThere were a lot of these things that seemed to be aligning\u2014that were telling me: Go back and get that PhD,\u201d she says. So she did, earning her doctorate in astronomy and astrobiology in 2014 from the University of Washington.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Astrobiology, Shields explains, is a relatively new field that studies the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe: \u201cIt\u2019s about how life got started on Earth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Astrobiologists might focus on the habitability of planets, or on methods for exploring life on other planets, or on liquids other than water that could support life. It\u2019s a highly interdisciplinary field. \u201cThere are astronomers that are looking for these planets and are using their particular field of expertise to answer that question: Are we alone?\u201d Shields explains. Some of them are \u201calso chemists and biologists and oceanographers and geologists who tackle these questions from their own lens and specific area of expertise,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s why I love it. As an astrobiologist, we don\u2019t have to get 15 PhDs. We get to collaborate with people in different departments who lend their own expertise \u2026 on those science questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shields is trying to answer a question sparked by the night sky\u2014one that\u2019s deeply personal yet universal in both the astronomical and the colloquial sense. \u201cEver since I was a little girl, I would look up at the sky and wonder what was out there,\u201d she says. \u201cIt comes from a sense of wonder for me. I still have that feeling when I look up at the night sky and I see these little pinpoints of light. I wonder: Is there anyone looking back at me? \u2026 How far does space go?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are, she explains, 100 billion stars in our galaxy, most orbited by at least one planet, and over 100 billion galaxies beyond ours. That\u2019s about 1022<\/sup> stars in the universe. The likelihood that only Earth was able to produce life \u201cI think is pretty low,\u201d Shields says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking for planetary environments that could be conducive to life beyond Earth,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd my team does that largely using climate models. These are the same kinds of models that can predict climate and weather on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shields plugs information gathered by observational astronomers into such models, along with different potential combinations of other, unknown variables\u2014like the type of light a planet receives from its host star, the composition of its atmosphere and surface, and certain orbital information. \u201cThere\u2019s only so much that you can really tell about a planet from the telescope information that you get,\u201d she explains. \u201cWe can explore that parameter space with climate models and say: Okay, if it has this surface composition, this is what the temperature would be like on this planet. If it has this atmospheric composition, this type of orbit, this is what the climate would be like, and this is how habitable it would be across its surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the early 1990s, astronomers have discovered 6,000 exoplanets. Shields says those in Earth\u2019s size range\u2014in which she\u2019s most interested\u2014number in the hundreds. A smaller subset of those are orbiting in what\u2019s called the \u201chabitable zone\u201d of their star, creating warm enough conditions to maintain water in liquid form\u2014the key to life. So far, as many as 100 or so planets that fall into that category have been identified, but the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, could find even more potentially habitable planets by detecting \u201cbiosignatures\u201d suggesting a biological presence, such as particular gases in their atmospheres or glints that might be reflections of water on the planetary surface.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Being able to detect more of these sorts of signals, Shields says, is the next \u201cbig mission\u201d in astronomy.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Shields
Shields\u2019s hugely popular TED Talk, \u201cHow we\u2019ll find life on other planets,\u201d has nearly 2 million views.<\/figcaption>
TED CONFERENCES, VIA YOUTUBE<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Today, in her academic work, her mind hurtles to the farthest reaches of the universe. But in her precious hours outside of academia, she has learned to be still. When her work schedule started to overwhelm her, Shields\u2019s health began to suffer. Then she discovered the practice of yoga nidra\u2014an ancient form of meditation in which practitioners are guided into a deeply restful \u201cyogic sleep.\u201d Shields read the book Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time and Energy Management for Ambitious Women<\/em>, which claims that 20 or 30 minutes of yoga nidra \u201cfeels like three hours of sleep in your body,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd as the mother of a young child, I was like: Okay, sign me up!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year she trained with Karen Brody, author of Daring to Rest:<\/em> Reclaim Your Power with Yoga Nidra Rest Meditation<\/em>, and became a certified facilitator. \u201cIt\u2019s been important to me to share it broadly and to really try to do my part to introduce the culture of academia, in particular, to this notion of resting as a daily practice,\u201d she says. Now she\u2019s at work on a book about her attempt to moderate\u2014to resist the temptation to take on too much. She has learned to decline invitations and put firm boundaries between her work and personal life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

Shields has realized that her seemingly disparate interests in astronomy and acting don\u2019t have to be mutually exclusive. Combining them makes her a more effective educator.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On a weekday in August, an ayurvedic soup simmers on her kitchen stove. A music stand occupies the corner of a room where she sometimes picks up her violin and plays fiddle tunes. (Her parents, both professional musicians, derived her name from a chant of vowel sounds they made up.) She mentions the poem \u201cswim | women of color\u201dby Nayyirah Waheed and recites it in a soft, rich voice. Part of it goes: \u201cThis structure counts on your inability to say no. mean no. they take no from our first breath. go back and return it to your mouth. your heart. your light<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to graciously let go or say no\u2014make room for someone else to say yes,\u201d Shields says. \u201cThat allows me to have more spaciousness in my schedule, because one thing I\u2019ve discovered is that women of color, as we proceed up the academic ladder, the requests just exponentially increase, and so saying no is not simply an important skill\u2014it\u2019s a survival skill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along the way, Shields has come to realize that her seemingly disparate interests in astronomy and acting don\u2019t have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, combining them\u2014and sharing her passion for both\u2014makes her a more effective educator. Her training as an actor helps her craft lectures that keep students engaged and animates her presentations, including her TED Talk, in a way that resonates with nonscientists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"Shields
Shields launched Rising Stargirls, which integrates writing, visual art, and theater exercises into astronomy workshops, to encourage middle-school girls to bring their whole selves to learning about the universe.<\/figcaption>
COURTESY OF RISING STARGIRLS<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Shields is also tapping into her love of acting to inspire the next generation of scientists who will help answer astronomy\u2019s big questions. As part of a postdoctoral fellowship through the National Science Foundation, she was asked to design an educational outreach component. \u201cI was like: Is there a scenario in which I could use acting to teach astronomy?\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I looked it up. There was precedent for that. Astronomy education journals had shown that when you involve girls in creative arts\u2014theater, writing\u2014and you incorporate that into astronomy education, you increase girls\u2019 confidence in both asking and answering questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The finding resonated with her own experience. After all, it was acting\u2014which she turned to when her professor discouraged her from studying astronomy\u2014that gave her the confidence to pursue astronomy again. \u201cI looked at acting as this outlet, this safe space,\u201d she says. \u201cNobody could tell me that I was wrong as an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that in mind, Shields launched Rising Stargirls<\/a>, which holds workshops using the creative arts to teach astronomy to \u00admiddle-school-aged girls of all backgrounds. She and her colleagues have since published a study showing that girls who attended the program reported being more excited to take science classes and were more likely to believe they could do well in science. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want them to know that who they are is inherently pivotal and critical to their study and practice of astronomy,\u201d Shields says. \u201cThe sciences are incredibly creative, and they get to bring that creative imagination and creative inspiration they find through the arts into learning about the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

That same exchange has played out in Shields\u2019s life, but it\u2019s only recently that she\u2019s come to see similarities between her roles as an astronomer and an actor. \u201cThey\u2019re both about story,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Actors have to convey the arc or evolution of a story through the lives of their characters. \u201cStars, \u00adplanets\u2014they have lives, too,\u201d Shields says. \u201cThey have births, they have evolution, and they die. It\u2019s my job as a scientist to unveil the story\u2014to discover the story of whether there\u2019s life elsewhere.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few people, if any, contemplate stars\u2014celestial or cinematic\u2014the way Aomawa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}