MarĆa BegoƱa Vila Costas is a Spanish astrophysicist specializing in the study of spiral galaxies. She currently resides in Washington, D.C. and works as a systems engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. She is the lead engineer for the Fine Guidance Sensor and Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS-NIRISS) on the JWST in addition to being in charge of the final cold test of the group of instruments