Lisa Kaltenegger

Lisa cold Egger ( born March 4, 1977 in Kuchl in Salzburg) is an Austrian astronomer, which is located at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy ( MPIA) in Heidelberg ( Germany ) and at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Boston (USA ) with the discovery and exploration of extrasolar planets and super-Earths busy. According to her ( 7734 ) Cold Egger was named based on their date of birth of the asteroid.

Life

After graduating in 1995 she began studies in film and media studies, technical physics, astronomy, translators and business with Japanese. In 1999 she graduated from the Astronomy at the Karl- Franzens- University Graz ( M.Sci ) and in 2001 the study of technical physics with specialization in biophysics and biomedicine at the Technical University of Graz ( M.Eng. ). In 2005 she received her doctorate at the Karl- Franzens- University of Graz in the field of astronomy with sub auspiciis and then worked for the European Space Agency (ESA ) in the Netherlands in search of extrasolar Earth-like planets. At the age of 27 years, she moved to Harvard University, where she conducted research and taught until 2010, the management of a seven -member international Emmy Noether Group at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg took over. She is also a Research Associate of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Lecturer at Harvard Astrophysics Department. Since 2009 she has also worked for the NASA Astrobiology Institute and the Extrasolar Planet Analysis Group at NASA.

Cold Egger deals specifically with the modeling and characterization of atmospheres to Earth-like planets and their interactions with the planet's surface. By means of analysis of atmospheric spectral fingerprints, ie the reflected light from exoplanets is searched for indicators that point to possible life (such as hydrogen and oxygen). Your research group at the MPIA was involved in the discovery of Kepler- 62e and Kepler - 62f, two planets are in the habitable zone, ie it would therefore be possible that there is life on the planet.

Awards

The asteroid ( 7734 ) Cold Egger was named after Lisa Egger cold. In 2012 she was awarded with prize money of 16,000 EUR Heinz- Maier- Leibnitz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

In 2007, she was named by Smithsonian Magazine as one of America's Young Innovators in 37 the Arts and Sciences, in 2005 she received her PhD Sub auspiciis Praesidentis at the Karl- Franzens- University of Graz.