Erika Hamden

BizTUCSONJuly 7, 2026

2 minutes read

Director
University of Arizona Space Institute

By Rodney Campbell

She’s a star in the astronomy world. She’s also a trained chef who delights in whipping up meals most nights.

There are different sides to Erika Hamden, director of the Space Institute and associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona. “I’m going to be maximally myself,” she said. “People think, ‘Oh, Erika. She’s just a wonderful wacko.’”

Space has topped her interests since childhood. Her head was already beyond the sky in elementary school. “I learned about the universe, stars and galaxies when I was in second grade,” she said. “I’ve been into it ever since.”

By the time Hamden was readying for graduate school, she was seeking a way to distinguish herself.

“I wanted to be the person who builds a telescope instead of the person who uses it,” she said. “It’s very niche. Even in a small field, you need to be unique. Having this talent in science and hardware was a valuable skill.”

There was a notable diversion along the way. Hamden took a year off between getting her degree and starting graduate school to earn a diploma from Le Cordon Bleu in London. She spent the time there also working as an au pair for an American family. After finishing her studies, she was a chef in New Jersey before starting her doctorate at Columbia University.

“I still love cooking,” Hamden said. “(Being a chef) gave me really good skills. It taught me a lot about hospitality. You frequently only have one opportunity to make someone happy.” For her other passion, she had accepted an offer to join the faculty at the University of Toronto when the opportunity in Tucson materialized in late 2017.

“I decided getting a job at the U of A would mean the only limit on what I could do were my own ambitions,” Hamden said. “At a lot of other universities, there’s a concern about what the administration will support.”

Aspera, her next mission, is scheduled to launch in January. Led by Carlos Vargas, an assistant astronomer at Steward Observatory, Aspera will study the diffuse matter surrounding galaxies, which may contribute to the birth of stars and planets.

Vargas credits Hamden, who is serving as deputy principal investigator on the mission, for making Aspera a reality. Aside from the spacecraft, everything for the $20 million mission was built on the UA campus.

“Erika is the kind of mentor who empowers the people around her to succeed,” Vargas said, “and Arizona’s scientific community is stronger because of her.”