As a staff research astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Dr. Alycia Weinberger is on the cutting edge in the hunt for extrasolar planets. At Carnegie since August 2001, she specializes in observations of circumstellar disks in the infrared part of the spectrum, at wavelengths from 1 to 20 microns. Her work includes use of the Hubble Space Telescope, and ground-based telescopes such as the Keck, in Hawaii, and Magellan, in Chile. Using high-angular resolution imaging, she discerns structure in disks and also searches for previously unknown young stars that harbor disks. Her research focuses on determining the conditions for planet formation within disks and the effects of planets on their dusty disk environments.
Dr. Weinberger was born in Philadelphia. She earned a bachelorís degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and a doctorate in physics from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Before coming to the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, first as a member of the Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared camera (NICMOS) science team and then as a NASA Astrobiology Institute postdoctoral fellow. In 2000, she was awarded the Annie Jump Cannon prize by the American Association of University Women and American Astronomical Society for significant research by a female postdoctoral scholar.