Professor Wendy Freedman  joined the University of Chicago in 2014 as the Sullivan University  Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, one of nine named University Professors. Previously, she held the Crawford H. Greenewalt Directorship of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. She was the founding chair of the Board of Directors (2003-2015) for the Giant Magellan Telescope, a 25-meter optical telescope scheduled for construction in Chile in 2032.

Professor Freedman  is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. She is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society. Her awards include the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics by the American Institute of Physics and American Astronomical Society, and she was one of three co-recipients of the 2009 Gruber Cosmology Prize.

Freedman's principle research interests are in observational cosmology and the evolution of galaxies. Presently her research interests are directed at increasing the accuracy of measurements of the expansion rate and testing whether there is new fundamental early-universe physics.