President Barack Obama announced on July 31 his intent to nominate astrophysicist France Córdova as the next Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. France Anne Córdova served as President of Purdue University from 2007 to 2012 and is currently President Emerita. Prior to Purdue, she served as Chancellor of the University of California at Riverside, where she was also a Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy. The first female chief scientist ever hired by NASA, Dr. Córdova also served as Deputy Group Leader in the Earth and Space Sciences Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory for more than a decade, and has held teaching positions at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Pennsylvania State University. She earned her B.A. from Stanford University in 1969, and went on to earn a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1979. If confirmed, Córdova would replace engineer Subra Suresh, who left NSF to become president of Carnegie Mellon University. The Senate must confirm Córdova’s nomination before she can become NSF’s 14th director and the second woman to lead the agency.