Jessie Christiansen

Atheist, Brainstormer, Explorer, Foodie, Parent, Scientist

Dr Jessie Christiansen is an astrophysicist with the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech, where she searches for, characterises and catalogues planets orbiting other stars. She is the lead scientist on the NASA Exoplanet Archive, and has worked on the NASA Kepler, K2, and now TESS missions to characterize the demographics of exoplanets, and to find and study the nearest planetary systems to Earth – systems that will be perfect for further study with the next generation of ground- and space-based telescopes. She is hunting for Earth 2.0 - and you can too.

Sharing the joy of discovery of exoplanets with everyone. We're finding whole new worlds! We're populating the voids around us with colour and structure and possibility. We think the Galaxy has billions of planets in it. I love using the discovery of planets as a gateway to talking about the underlying physics problems we're trying to solve, and to nurture excitement and trust and science literacy in the audience. I'm also excited to bring science discovery to the people, through citizen science. You can find your OWN planet! With a few minutes and an internet connection, you can be helping search through the huge amounts of data coming down from NASA's space telescopes. And then I get to include you on the discovery paper! (You don't get to name it, I'm sorry. But you can nickname it whatever you like!). I'm also very drawn into exploring what it means to humankind to be discovering exoplanets. What would it mean to find Earth 2.0? Would it change your life to know that there was life out there, in the Galaxy? What is the more terrifying prospect - that we are alone? Or that we aren't? Finally, I'm passionate about making the astronomy community a more inclusive, more supportive, better place for everyone, including historically marginalized and minoritized people.

Astronomy, Citizen Science, Data archiving and discovery

Making up silly songs, putting on puppet shows when my kids are in the bath, Settlers of Catan, making cheese flan.