Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger, a member of the new NASA Executive Committee on Extrasolar Planet Analysis will be the featured speaker at the College of Charleston’s Conrad D. Festa Community Lecture in Science & Mathematics series on March 5, 2010. The lecture will be held in the auditorium (room 129) of the new College of Charleston Science Building beginning at 6:00 pm.
Kaltenegger will talk about the steps astronomers have recently taken in characterizing exoplanets (planets that orbit other stars) and the current and future opportunities to discover “Super-Earths” with the James Webb Space Telescope. The Webb Space Telescope will be the replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope.
Kaltenegger is a research associate and lecturer at Harvard University. Along with being one of 9 members of the NASA Executive Committee on Extrasolar Planet Analysis, she won ‘America’s Young Innovator in Arts and Science Award’ by the Smithsonian Magazine in 2007. She also was named “Outstanding Young Scientist” at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard in 2007.
Her work has been featured on CNN, the History Channel, and NOVA.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Limited seating is available for this lecture.
