Biography:

María Begoña Vila Costas is a Spanish astrophysicist specializing in the study of spiral galaxies. She currently resides in Washington, D.C. and works as a systems engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. She is the lead engineer for the Fine Guidance Sensor and Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS-NIRISS) on the JWST in addition to being in charge of the final cold test of the group of instruments before their integration with the telescope. She is now working on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.