Professor Marcia Rieke is an American astronomer and one of the pioneer-founders of the field of infrared observational astronomy. Her research interests include infrared observations of the center of the Milky Way and of high-redshift (early universe) galactic nuclei. Born in Michigan, she took undergraduate (1972) and graduate (1976) degrees in Physics from M.I.T., after which she began a postdoctoral position at the University of Arizona, where she has made her career ever since. She is Regents' Professor of Astronomy, and is the principal investigator for the near-infrared camera (NIRCam) on the James Webb Space Telescope. Following on from the Hubble Space Telescope’s capture of the public’s imagination for deep space, JWST’s first stunning full-color images and spectroscopic data were released in July 2022, commanding unprecedented public engagement with science. Among multiple distinctions, Professor Rieke is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007), Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2012), she was awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal (2014), Robert H. Goddard Award for Achievement in Science (2014), and is Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society (2020).