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Dr. David Charbonneau
Assistant Professor of Astronomy
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Dr. David Charbonneau joined the Harvard University faculty in the department of astronomy in August 2004. His research focuses on the development of novel techniques for the detection and characterization of planets orbiting nearby Sun-like stars. Charbonneau is a founding member of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey, which uses a network of small, automated telescopes to survey tens of thousands of stars for periodic eclipses that indicate the passage of orbiting planets. While a graduate student at Harvard, Charbonneau and colleagues used a similar telescope to detect the first such eclipse of a planet. In 2001, they studied that same eclipsed planet with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and detected its atmosphere, the first detection of that type outside the solar system. Charbonneau earned his doctorate in astronomy from Harvard and received his undergraduate degree in math and physics from the University of Toronto, Canada. In 2004, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific awarded him the Robert J. Trumpler Award for his graduate thesis entitled "Shadows and Reflections of Extrasolar Planets."
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