Professor Michele Dougherty CBE

Professor Michele Dougherty CBE is Executive Chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Michele took up the position of STFC Executive Chair in January 2025. STFC is one of the nine councils of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which supports research in astronomy, physics, computational science and space science, and operates world class research facilities for the UK.

Michele is a professor of space physics and former Head of the Physics Department at Imperial College London. Michele led unmanned exploratory missions to Saturn and Jupiter and was the principal investigator of the magnetometer instrument onboard the Cassini mission to Saturn. She is principal investigator of the magnetometer for the European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) that launched in April 2023.

Born in South Africa in 1962, her love of space science began when her father built his own 10-inch telescope in the family’s back garden. Physics was not even on the curriculum of her all-girls’ school in South Africa. She gained a BSc in applied mathematics at the (then) University of Natal, where she stayed on to do an honours year in physics followed by a PhD.

She started her career working on the theory of solar wind and galactic wind outflows at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, before moving to Imperial in 1991. Soon after joining Imperial, she was asked whether she would like to get involved with preparing a magnetic field model for when the Ulysses spacecraft flew past Jupiter on its way to orbit the Sun at its poles. This proved to be the start of her career in space physics.

Professor Dougherty was principal investigator for the magnetometer on the exploratory Cassini mission to Saturn and now holds the same role for the European Space Agency’s JUICE Jupiter moon orbiting project, which launched in April 2023 and is expected to arrive in the Jupiter system by 2032.

Her use of magnetic field data on the Cassini mission led to the discovery of an atmosphere containing water and hydrocarbons around Saturn’s moon Enceladus — opening up new possibilities in the search for life. For this, she was awarded the IOP Chree Medal and Prize in 2007 and the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal in 2008. She has been a fellow of the Royal Society since 2012 and received one of its prestigious Research Professorships in 2014.

She chaired the UK Space Agency’s Science Programme Advisory Committee from 2013-2016. In 2017, she became only the fifth woman to be awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s gold medal for geophysics, recognising lifetime achievement in the field.

This was followed by the IOP Richard Glazebrook medal and prize in 2018 in recognition of her scientific leadership on both the Cassini and JUICE missions. In 2019, She was named a fellow of the American Geophysical Union for her exceptional scientific contribution to space science.

Professor Dougherty is also a member of the Science and Technology Facilities Council at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and an honorary international member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was awarded a CBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours list for services to UK Physical Science Research.

She is President-Elect of the Institute of Physics and will formally take up the role of President in autumn 2025.