BSc (Griffith) 2002, BSc (Hons) (ANU) 2003, PhD (UNSW) 2008
The most successful woman planet hunter in the world
Dr. Jessie Christiansen is the Chief Scientist of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute.
After searching for exoplanets - planets around other stars - for four years at UNSW and obtaining her PhD in 2008, she accepted a postdoctoral research position at Harvard University and moved to Boston, Massachusetts. Dr Christiansen moved to NASA Ames in California to work on the NASA Kepler mission in 2010, which saw her awarded the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal.
She subsequently joined the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech/IPAC in 2013, where she has worked on the NASA Kepler, K2, and TESS missions, and is helping plan for NASA’s next big flagship missions - the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
Dr. Christiansen’s research is in both the detection and characterization of exoplanets, and studies of their populations, and she is currently the most successful woman planet hunter in the world. She is married to fellow astronomer and Caltech professor, Philip Hopkins, and also wrangles nine-year-old twins, two cats, and a puppy in their house in the foothills of Los Angeles.
