Residence U.S. | Name Rebecca Oppenheimer | |
 | ||
Fields Chemistry, Materials science | ||
Rebecca Oppenheimer: "First and Second Generation High Contrast Imaging Experiments for Comparative
Dr. Rebecca Oppenheimer (born as Ben R. Oppenheimer) is an American astrophysicist and one of three curators in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Rebecca is an exoplanetary scientist who develops new instruments to image planets orbiting stars other than the sun with the ultimate goal of finding life outside the solar system.
Contents
- Rebecca Oppenheimer First and Second Generation High Contrast Imaging Experiments for Comparative
- Early life and education
- Career
- Awards and Honors
- References
Early life and education
Oppenheimer attended the Horace Mann School in the Bronx. After graduating in 1990, she attended Columbia University, where she was an I. I. Rabi Science Scholar. She received a BSc in Physics from Columbia in 1994. In 1999 she was granted a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology and spent the following two years at the University of California at Berkeley on a Hubble Space Telescope Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.
Career
Oppenheimer holds an adjunct professorship at Columbia University's Department of Astronomy and has published over one hundred research and public-oriented science articles. She is co-discoverer of the first brown dwarf, Gliese 229B, and is active in research on exoplanets, white dwarfs, adaptive optics and coronagraphy. Oppenheimer serves on NASA, NSF and NRC committees. She is the principal investigator for Project 1640, an exoplanet imaging project.
In 2001, she moved back to New York City to conduct research at the American Museum of Natural History, where she joined the faculty in 2004. Oppenheimer regularly gives public and professional lectures on astronomical research.
Awards and Honors
2009: Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists, New York Academy of Sciences
2003: Carter Memorial Lecturer, Carter Observatory, Wellington, New Zealand
2002-2004: Kalbfleisch Research Fellowship, American Museum of Natural History
2002: National Academies of Science, Beckman Frontiers of Science, Invited Participant
1999-2002: Hubble Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. In the fellows list, she is listed as Ben Oppenheimer.
1994-1997: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
1990-1994: I.I. Rabi Science Scholar, Columbia University
1990: Westinghouse Science Competition, Honorable Mention
1989: New York Academy of Sciences Science Writing Competition, First Place