10/07/2016
Our fourth and final speaker tonight will be Heather Knutson, astrophysicist and assistant professor at California Institute of Technology in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. Her research is focused on the study of exoplanets, their composition, and their formation. She won the American Astronomical Society's Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy for her work in exoplanetary atmospheres. Popular Science calls her “the first exoplanet meteorologist, determining the local temperature, weather, and even composition of the atmosphere."
As an undergraduate in the physics department of Johns Hopkins University, Heather worked part-time as an intern with the Space Telescope Science Institute. In 2004, she graduated with a B.S. in physics with both departmental and university honors. She defended her Ph.D. thesis in 2009, and obtained the title of Doctor of Philosophy in astronomy from Harvard University in 2009. Her most recent discovery is that approximately half of the systems harboring gas giant planets have distant massive companions orbiting them, a result that further supports the idea of planetary migration in the formation of hot Jupiters.
