Powered by Research Education at University Libraries. STEAM Salon is an informal series held in the STEM Library featuring faculty and student speakers in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics who engage and inspire our university community with their current research.

So you want to find a new planet, and you don’t know where to start. This talk will introduce you to the field of exoplanets and how to find them! We will take a tour of the different detection methods for discovering exoplanets, focusing on the “direct detection method” that Ellis has utilized for their thesis. Finally, we will discuss the non-traditional methods Ellis has used to spread the scientific word to the general public.

Ellis Bogat received Bachelor of Science degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2017. Following graduation, they spent three years on the Mars Reconnaissance Team at NASA Headquarters helping to develop human missions to Mars. Ellis is now in the final year of the Astronomy PhD program at the University of Maryland College Park, where they have developed techniques to take direct images of planets orbiting distant stars. This spring, Ellis will transition to the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille in southern France to continue exploring exoplanet systems with the soon-to-launch Nancy G. Roman Space Telescope.