Santa Barbara Renaissance Faire’s Queen

Michelle Thaller…is an astrophysicist with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where she works on NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and coordinates educational campaigns…

Thaller's Cal Tech credentials and her gift for explaining high-flown concepts in down-to-earth language have earned her appearances on the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel and PBS.
Her latest venture is the History Channel's "The Universe," where Thaller has been featured as an expert on the Milky Way and other galaxies.

…Thaller acknowledges that, having left a tenure-track research job for one where most of her duties are in education and administration, she sometimes feels pulled off-course.

"There's a snobbishness about 'pure' research that you can easily fall into," she reflects. "So I have to remind myself that I love what I do, I'm well-paid for what I do, and my job allows me to have a life."
That extracurricular life involves giving dinner parties where the light sabers occasionally come out for entertainment, as well as summer revels at the Santa Barbara Renaissance Faire, where Thaller dresses in period finery for her role in the queen's court - "that appeals to my theatrical side, too…"

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http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=732432