About Natalie

Dr. Natalie Gosnell is an observational astrophysicist, artist, and Associate Professor of Physics at Colorado College. In her work as a teacher-scholar, she is committed to building bridges across disciplinary boundaries, particularly in the world of art-science. Dr. Gosnell is the recipient of a Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement and was recognized with an Excellence in Teaching Award from Colorado College.

Prior to joining the faculty at Colorado College, Dr. Gosnell was a W. J. McDonald Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin for two years. She received her masters and Ph.D. in Astronomy with a minor in Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and graduated cum laude from Colorado College with a B.A. in Physics.

Dr. Gosnell’s artistic residencies include Leonardo@Djerassi, the Sundance Institute Theater Lab, the Guild of Future Architects Shared Futures Incubator, Brooklyn College, and The Public Theater. Her co-created artistic work, The Gift, has been presented by Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts, the Fine Arts Center of Colorado Springs at Colorado College, Stanford University, and the Los Angeles Music Center as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time series, among others.

Her astrophysics research focuses on binary stars that have been fundamentally changed by the presence of their companion. Together with her collaborators, she uses telescopes both on the ground and in space (such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, Kepler/K2, and TESS) to gather information about these stars in order to discover their stories. Her work has been published in the Astrophysical Journal, the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the Astronomical Journal, and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Dr. Gosnell has been a close collaborator with artist Janani Balasubramanian since 2018. Together they are co-writing Undisciplined: Radical Strategies for Growing Artist-Scientists Collaborations, forthcoming from University of California Press in early 2027.