Heidi's family moved seven times before settling in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, in 1970. As a kid Heidi loved math, playing Monopoly, and music. She played piano and percussion and sang in a chorus.
In college at MITThe Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyHeidi took her first astronomy class. When she started taking pictures of the night skies, she knew that watching the stars and planets would be her life's work. Heidi discovered she had a real knack for gathering and interpreting data with the college's telescopes. She even used her talents to improve the telescopes.
Although Heidi was hooked on astronomy, she still loved music. At MIT she sang and played guitar in a bluegrass band, and during graduate school she went to China to play percussion in a Chinese opera.