HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Astrophysicist Chryssa Kouveliotou, a senior scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, has been elected to National Academy of Sciences. Membership in the academy comes by a vote of academy members and is conferred on a limited number of scientists each year with distinguished careers of ongoing scientific accomplishment. It is one of the highest honors in science.

Kouveliotou is the only living member of the academy in Alabama, but geneticist Louise Chow at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is a foreign associate, an affiliate honor given to foreign nationals that does not include voting rights in the academy.

Kouveliotou was on the original team that proved gamma rays were coming from outside the galaxy, and she is one of the principal scientists on the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, an instrument flying aboard the Femi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Throughout her career, NASA said Thursday, Kouveliotou has worked on one "vital" NASA research mission after another, including the International Sun Earth Explorer-3, the Solar Maximum Mission and the Burst and Transient Source Experiment, which flew on NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory.

"I salute the National Academy of Sciences for their recognition of the groundbreaking scientific contributions that Dr. Kouveliotou has made in the field of high energy astrophysics," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Her work in expanding our knowledge of the nature of cosmic gamma-ray bursts, and her broad efforts in the service of science are exemplary of the creativity, collaboration and innovation that are hallmarks of a great scientist. I extend my heartfelt congratulations to her, and am confident that she will continue to do great science and serve the nation as a member of the academy."

A native of Athens, Greece, Kouveliotou has received numerous awards. In 2012 alone, she earned the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and was named one of Time magazine's 25 most influential people in space.

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Marshall Space Flight Center astrophysicist Chryssa Kouveliotou elected to the National Academy of Sciences