Dr Aki Roberge (born c. 1973) is a research astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she is currently the Associate Director for Technology and Strategy.

[10][11] Born in Kyoto, Japan,[12] to an American potter[13] and a Japanese Chemical engineer,[9] Roberge grew up in a rural community in Vermont and was exposed to science in high school.

She earned a bachelor's degree in Physics with a minor in Planetary science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996 with Jim Elliot (discoverer of the rings of Uranus)[9] and a PhD in Astrophysics from Johns Hopkins University in 2002.

[14] She went on to conduct postdoctoral research at the Carnegie Institution for Science with Alycia J. Weinberger before taking a position at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in 2005.

[15] Her work was crucial in demonstrating its extreme carbon-rich nature,[11][16] and later in studying the carbon monoxide gas clouds indicating swarms of colliding comets in the young system.