Space Imaging and Optical Systems Lab – Page 10 – BUILDING TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE FUTURE OF SPACE SCIENCES

NASA Deputy Administrator Visits SIOSlab

As part of her recent visit to the Sibley School, NASA deputy administrator Dava Newman stopped by SIOSlab to hear about our work. We were all very excited to share our research, especially as so much of our support comes from NASA. Many thanks to Dr. Newman, Danielle Wood, Ana Diaz Artiles and everyone involved in making her visit here a great success.

Pictured (left to right): Jacob Shapiro, Danielle Wood (Special Assistant to the Deputy Administrator), Dava Newman, Gabriel Soto, Dmitry Savransky, Joyce Fang, Christian Delacroix, Daniel Garrett.

Applied Optics Paper Published

Our new paper “Automated alignment of a reconfigurable optical system using focal-plane sensing and Kalman filtering” has been published in OSA Applied Optics DOI.

ApJ Paper Published

Our new paper titled “Analytical formulation of the single-visit completeness joint probability density function” has been published in The Astrophysical Journal. The paper can be accessed through DOI.

SIOSlab at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes 2016

We attended the 2016 SPIE Astronomical Telescopes+Instrumentation meeting in Edinburgh and presented multiple cool thing. Links to talks here and here.

ERES II Symposium at Cornell, June 13&14 2016

The second annual Emerging Researchers in Exoplanet Science (ERES) symposium was held at Cornell. Christian (slides) and Gabriel (slides) presented their work.

Congratulations to Joyce Fang on Passing Her A Exam

Joyce Fang successfully passed her A exam on Monday April 19th, marking her entrance into the dissertation phase of her degree program.

WFIRST GI-GO and WPS meeting

On February 29 – March 2, we attended the international meeting Community Astrophysics with WFIRST: Guest Observer and Archival Science in Pasadena, followed by the WFIRST Preparatory Science team meeting on March 3. Christian D. presented a poster and Dmitry S. gave a talk on science modeling for the WFIRST coronagraph.

WFIRST Enters Phase A

NASA has announced the formal start of the WFIRST mission. See the press release here. SIOSlab will be playing a major role in this process as members of the coronagraph Science Investigation Team. Congratulations to all involved in getting this fantastic project to this point – now let’s head for launch in 2024!

227th AAS Meeting

We attended the 227th AAS Meeting in Kissimmee, FL. Daniel Garrett presented his poster titled, “Science Yield Modeling with EXOSIMS.” Dmitry Savransky gave a talk titled, “WFIRST-AFTA Coronagraphic Instrument Science Yield Modeling Updates.”

NAE Bridge Article Published

I have had the great honor of having my review article presented at the last National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Meeting published in the Academy’s quarterly publication – The Bridge. The full text of the article can be accessed here. Many thanks to the NAE, the organizers of the FOE meeting, and especially to Sara Seager and Mitchell Walker for inviting me to speak at their session.