- Seminars and Workshops
- Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Location
- Speaker Name
Dan Jaffe [UT Austin]
- State
Definitive
- Url
High-Resolution, Large-Grasp Spectrographs Yield New Insights into Exoplanets, Young Planetary Systems, and the ISM
Bio: Daniel Jaffe is Vice President for Research and Professor of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. As Vice President for Research, Jaffe oversees sponsored projects, major research cores, and research compliance. He oversees several major interdisciplinary research institutes, including the Texas Advanced Computing Center, and the University’s Bridging Barriers grand challenge research initiative. His unit plays a major role in developing large center grant proposals. Jaffe leads a research group in astronomical spectroscopy, astronomical instrumentation, and development of dispersive optics using precision nanolithography. His team studies the formation of stars and planetary systems and the effects of stellar radiation on the dense interstellar medium using infrared spectroscopy. They also study the physics of protoplanetary disks and use radial velocity techniques to search for planets around very young stars. He is PI for a Korea-Texas collaboration to build high-resolution near-IR spectrometers including IGRINS, which has been a productive instrument on the McDonald Observatory 2.7m, the 4.2m Lowell Discovery and the 8m Gemini South telescopes. The team is constructing a revolutionary 1-5 micron high-resolution spectrometer for the Giant Magellan Telescope. Jaffe's group develops novel diffractive devices for infrared spectroscopy using Si nanolithography. They have built the mid-IR grisms for the NIRCam instrument on the James Webb Space telescope and have fabricated near-IR immersion gratings for IGRINS and for the ISHELL spectrograph on the NASA IRTF while developing new production techniques for space astronomy and earth science applications.