Professor Wendy Freedman is one of eight University Professors at the University of Chicago appointed by the president of
the university. For eleven years (2003-2014) she served as the Crawford H. Greenewalt Director of the Carnegie
Observatories in Pasadena, California. A native of Toronto, Canada, she received her doctorate in astronomy and
astrophysics from the University of Toronto in 1984. She received a Carnegie Fellowship at the Observatories in 1984,
joined the permanent faculty in 1987, and was appointed Director in 2003. From 2003-2015, she served as chair of the
Board of Directors for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), a 25-m optical telescope scheduled for construction in Chile
in 2022.