NASA Announces 2011 Carl Sagan Fellows

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Priscilla Vega (818) 354-1357
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Priscilla.r.vega@jpl.nasa.gov


News release: 2011-099 March 29, 2011

NASA Announces 2011 Carl Sagan Fellows

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-099&cid=release_2011-099

NASA has selected five potential discoverers as the recipients of the 2011 Carl Sagan
Postdoctoral Fellowships, named after the late astronomer. The Carl Sagan Fellowship
takes a theme-based approach, in which fellows will focus on compelling scientific
questions, such as "Are there Earth-like planets orbiting other stars?"

Sagan once said, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known," which is in
line with the Sagan Fellowship's primary goal: to discover and characterize planetary
systems and Earth-like planets around other stars. Planets outside of our solar system are
called exoplanets. The fellowship also aims to support outstanding recent postdoctoral
scientists in conducting independent research broadly related to the science goals of
NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program.

Previous Sagan Fellows have contributed significant discoveries in exoplanet exploration.
including: the first characterizations of a super-Earth's atmosphere using a ground-based
telescope; and the discovery of a massive disk of dust and gas encircling a giant young
star, which could potentially answer the long-standing question of how massive stars are
born.

"The Sagan Fellowship program seeks to identify the most highly qualified young
researchers in the field of exoplanets. Nowhere is the dynamism of this young branch of
astronomy demonstrated more dramatically than by the intellectual quality and
enthusiasm of these five new Sagan Fellows," said Charles Beichman, executive director
of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. "These scientists are certain to be leaders of this exciting and rapidly growing
field for many years to come."

The program, created in 2008, awards selected postdoctoral scientists with annual
stipends of approximately $64,500 for up to three years, plus an annual research budget
of up to $16,000. Topics range from techniques for detecting the glow of a dim planet in
the blinding glare of its host star, to searching for the crucial ingredients of life in other
planetary systems.

The 2011 Sagan Fellows are:

-- David Kipping, who will work at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
Cambridge, to combine theory and observation to conduct a search for the moons of
exoplanets.

-- Bryce Croll, who will work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
Mass., to characterize the atmospheres of both large and small exoplanets using a variety
of telescopes.

-- Wladimir Lyra, who will work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.,
to study planet-forming disks and exoplanet formation.

-- Katie Morzinski, who will work at the University of Arizona, Tucson, to commission
and employ high-contrast adaptive optics systems that will directly image Jupiter-like
exoplanets.

-- Sloane Wiktorowicz, who will work at the University of California, Santa Cruz to use a
technique called optical polarimetry to directly detect exoplanets.

NASA has two other astrophysics theme-based fellowship programs: the Einstein
Fellowship Program, which supports research into the physics of the cosmos, and the
Hubble Fellowship Program, which supports research into cosmic origins. The Sagan
Fellowship Program is administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute as part of
NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program at JPL in Pasadena, Calif. The California
Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA.

A full description of the 2011 fellows and their projects, and other information about
these programs is available at:
http://nexsci.caltech.edu/sagan/2011postdocRecipients.shtml .

More information about NASA's Astrophysics Division is at:
http://nasascience.nasa.gov/astrophysics .

-end-

To remove yourself from this mailing, please go to http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?a=dpIHKRNxGjINL4K&s=hhKWJYPBJdLILXNHKrE&m=dhKOLUNxH8KLJaK

To remove yourself from all mailings from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, please go to http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?a=giJNK0OJImLUJeJ&s=hhKWJYPBJdLILXNHKrE&m=dhKOLUNxH8KLJaK