Mercedes López-Morales is a Spanish-American astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who works on detection and characterization of exoplanet atmospheres.[1][2]
Mercedes López-Morales | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| Known for | Discovery and characterization of Exoplanets |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Exoplanet astrophysics |
| Institutions | Harvard & Smithsonian |
| Notable students | Munazza Alam, Chantanelle Nava |
Education and career edit
López-Morales studied physics during her undergraduate program at Universidad de La Laguna, in the Canary Islands, Spain.[1] She received her PhD in astronomy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004.[2] After completing her doctoral degree, she was a Carnegie postdoctoral fellow from 2004 until 2010 at the Carnegie Science Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) in Washington, DC.[3] During her tenure at the Carnegie Science DTM, López-Morales was also a postdoc at the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI).[4] In 2007, López-Morales was awarded a Hubble Fellowship.[5] While at the NAI, she worked on two different projects, From Molecular Clouds to Habitable Planetary Systems and Looking Outward: Studies of the Physical and Chemical Evolution of Planetary Systems.[4]
Work edit
Between 2010 and 2012, López-Morales returned to Spain to join the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain,[1] where she was awarded a prestigious Ramón y Cajal Fellowship. She joined the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in 2012.[2] In 2014–2015, she was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where she worked on Searching for Atmospheric Signatures of Other Worlds.[2]
López-Morales is currently the Deputy Associate Director for Science at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, where she also leads the Exoplanet Spectroscopy Survey (ACCESS) project where she investigates optical properties of exoplanet atmospheres using spectroscopy techniques.[1] She is also Co-PI of the PanCET project, the largest exoplanet atmospheres program awarded time on the Hubble Space Telescope. López-Morales's work also focuses on the discovery and characterization of terrestrial exoplanets using HARPS-N, a high-resolution optical spectrograph with broad wavelength coverage located in the Northern hemisphere.[1][6]
References edit
- ^ a b c d e "Mercedes López-Morales". Harvard University. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
- ^ a b c d "Radcliffe Institute Fellows". Harvard University. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
- ^ "Carnegie Science DTM". dtm.carnegiescience.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-16.
- ^ a b "NASA Astrobiology Institute-Directory". nai.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2018-12-03.
- ^ "Hubble Fellows 1990-2017". axe-info.stsci.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-16.
- ^ "HARPS-N Project". plone.unige.ch. Retrieved 4 December 2018.