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Exoplanet Technology Laboratory

Summer Research Opportunities for 2021

We are looking for summer students to help design instruments, test experimental technologies, and analyze data from new instruments that we have built. The internships will be 10 weeks long, and researchers will be paid a $6,620 stipend for their work. Unfortunately due to COVID-19, we are not offering any hands-on lab work this year, but we do have opportunities to work on lab experiments remotely. The summer projects are listed below under a few different themes.

Simulation and experimental work to inform future instrument design

  • Data simulations to understand how ground-based efforts to study exoplanet atmospheres may be limited by Earth's atmosphere.
  • Design or simulate the exoplanet science capabilities of photonics-based spectrographs (spectrograph on a chip)
  • Experiment with new techniques to better detect exoplanets on our coronagraph testbed
  • Simulate future observations or write code to control hardware for VFN, a new exoplanet detection technique we are pioneering

Data Reduction Pipeline Development and Instrument Characterization

  • Data pipeline development, instrument characterization, or characterizing exoplanets and brown dwarfs observed by KPIC.
  • Precise radial velocity extraction for the high-resolution infrared spectrograph PARVI
  • Developing planet detection methods and instrument calibration for moderate resolution spectroscopy with Keck/OSIRIS.
  • Build a library of reference star images from multiple years of observations to improve sensitivity to planets at small separations in our existing data

Data analysis and the development of new techniques to maximize the science of existing data

  • Analyze spectra of the Sun to investigate the impact of Sun spots and other stellar activity signatures on the Solar absorption line shapes.
  • Modeling observed circumstellar disk data to test if stellar fly-bys can create spiral arms in disks or to look for protoplanets embedded in the disk
  • Developing new techniques to efficiently fit the orbits of exoplanets we are monitoring and contributing to our open-source package (orbitize!)
  • Building a catalog of the most-promising stars to detect planets around with our current (NIRC2) and upcoming (VFN) instruments.

To apply, please fill out this form with some information about yourself and which projects you are interested in by February 5th, 2020.

We are looking for enthusiastic students with a desire to learn new skills and contribute to upcoming exoplanet discoveries. No previous research experience required. Anyone that is eligible for SURF, WAVE, or CAMPARE can apply. For SURF applicants, please submit the above application to be considered for one of the above projects in the ET Lab. For WAVE applicants, please also apply directly to WAVE (with a deadline is January 9th), in addition to submitting this ET Lab application. For CAMPARE students, please also apply directly to CAMPARE (Feb. 1 deadline), and fill out the ET lab form. Please email Dimitri Mawet (dmawet@astro.caltech.edu) or Jason Wang (jwang4@caltech.edu) if you have any questions about the application process.