Nicola Fox (born 1968), British astrophysicist. Fox was appointed the Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in February 2023. Fox is the second woman to hold this position in the agency's history. Fox studied in physics at Imperial College London, UK earning her bachelor's degree in 1990 and completing her PhD in Space and Atmospheric Physics in 1995. After her PhD Fox moved to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center where she was a US National Research Council postdoctoral fellow, mentored by Mario Acuna. In 1998 she joined Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where she worked on many NASA missions including the Parker Solar Probe. Fox was appointed Head of NASA's Heliophysics Division in 2018. As NASA's head of science, Fox directs more than 100 NASA missions to probe questions about the universe. Her portfolio covers a wide range of fields, from investigating how hurricanes form, to supporting astronauts on the Moon, and to searching for other life in our universe.