Dr. Michael McElwain is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at Princeton University. The PI will develop new ground-based observing techniques that improve the direct-detection sensitivity to extrasolar planets by a magnitude or more. These techniques will be assessed on-sky using the high contrast imaging system (HCIS) at the Subaru Telescope, and the results of this study will guide the observing program of the 120-night Subaru Strategic Exploration of Exoplanets and Disks (SEEDS) survey. Dr. McElwain will participate in the first-light science using Subaru's new high contrast instrumentation, and he will lead the "Moving Group" category of the SEEDS survey. In addition, through simulations and laboratory experiments, Dr. McElwain will design and characterize a focal plane wavefront sensing unit for the HCIS.
Dr. McElwain will also create a new course for the Princeton University Questioning Underlies Effective Science Teaching (QUEST) institute that targets the professional development of secondary school physical science teachers. The course will use inquiry-based learning techniques to bring current exoplanetary science research into the classroom. In addition, Dr. McElwain will post the entire QUEST institute material online in a user-friendly web interface. These public online materials and video demonstrations are expected to reach more than 2000 New Jersey students each year, and this resource will be available to anyone with the internet.
