Email This PageJennifer Yee ’07
Jennifer Yee ’07 received a Carl Sagan Exoplanet Postdoctoral Fellowship, intended to inspire researchers
seeking to learn about planets—and possibly life—around other stars. It also supports postdoctoral scientists’ research relating to NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program.
Yee will receive a Ph.D. in astronomy from the Ohio State University in August. Through the Sagan Fellowship, she will continue her study of extrasolar planets at Harvard using a technique called gravitational microlensing, which uses the bending of light predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity to detect planets around distant stars. Yee has been coordinating global observations of microlensing events, which are extremely time-sensitive because they rely on transitory, chance alignments of stars. During her fellowship, she will measure the frequency of Jupiter-like planets around the smallest stars, which will help us understand how these planets form.
