Maggie Aderin Pocock

Why organisations work with Maggie Aderin-Pocock

• She has built optical instruments that flew on ESA satellites and sit inside major ground-based telescopes, so her authority on STEM careers comes from doing the work, not commenting on it.
• She is one of a small group of scientists who can hold a prime-time television audience, which is why The Sky at Night has kept her on air since 2014. Internal communications teams use her to make technical strategy land with the rest of the business.
• The Institute of Physics awarded her the 2020 Kelvin Medal for public engagement, the first time a Black woman has received a gold medal from the IoP. That credential gives diversity and inclusion programmes a credible scientific anchor.
• Through Science Innovation Ltd she has run STEM outreach for more than 350,000 students, giving her practical evidence about what actually moves under-represented young people into technical careers, not just theory.
• She speaks openly about being diagnosed with dyslexia at eight and the assumptions teachers made about her, which lets leadership audiences hear an inclusion argument grounded in lived experience rather than policy language.

Biography highlights

• BSc in Physics and PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London.
• Honorary research associate, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London.
• Chancellor of the University of Leicester.
• Co-presenter of BBC’s The Sky at Night, the world’s longest-running television science programme.
• Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE), 2024, for services to science education and diversity.
• 2020 William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics.
• Author of The Sky at Night: Book of the Moon, A Guide to Our Closest Neighbour (Penguin / BBC Books).

Biography

The instruments that measure wind from space, or split starlight into its component frequencies on a Chilean mountaintop, are built by small teams of engineers most people will never hear of. Maggie Aderin-Pocock has spent her career inside those teams. She managed the observation instruments for the European Space Agency’s Aeolus satellite at Astrium, and led a group of seventeen engineers building a high-resolution spectrograph for the Gemini telescope in Chile.

That hands-on instrumentation career sits underneath everything else she does. It is why a BBC commissioner trusted her with The Sky at Night, the longest-running television science programme in the world, and why universities and government bodies treat her science communication as substantive rather than decorative. Imperial College trained her as a physicist and mechanical engineer; University College London hosts her as an honorary research associate; the University of Leicester appointed her Chancellor in 2023.

Public engagement is the second strand of the work, and it has been institutionally recognised. The Institute of Physics awarded her its 2020 Kelvin Medal for exceptional services to science education and physics communication. She was the first Black woman to receive a gold medal from the IoP. Through her social enterprise Science Innovation Ltd she has run hands-on STEM outreach for more than 350,000 students, much of it in inner-city schools that conventional pipelines do not reach.

She talks publicly about being diagnosed with dyslexia at eight and being assumed to be heading for a career other than science. That is not autobiography for its own sake, it is the evidence base for how she argues about inclusion: leaders who want a wider technical pipeline have to look at where the system filters people out, not only where it lets them in. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2024 for services to science education and diversity.

Key speaking topics

• Diversity and inclusion in STEM
• Science communication for non-specialist audiences
• Space science, satellites, and astronomy
• The future of space exploration
• STEM education and the technical talent pipeline
• Curiosity and creativity in technical organisations

Ideal for

• CHROs and heads of talent building technical and STEM pipelines
• Heads of internal communications translating engineering or science strategy to general audiences
• DEI leads working on retention and progression of under-represented technical staff
• Leaders running large customer or employee events that need a credible science voice

Audience outcomes

• A clearer view of where standard recruiting and education pipelines filter out under-represented technical talent, and what actually changes that.
• Practical language for explaining complex technical work to non-technical colleagues, customers, or boards.
• A current picture of where space science and satellite technology are heading and what that means for adjacent industries.
• Renewed conviction among technical staff that their work matters beyond the lab, told through someone who has built instruments that flew.