Mercedes López-Morales is a

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

- American astrophysicist at the

Space Telescope Science Institute The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), science operations and mission operations center for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and science operations center for the ...

(STScI) in

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

, who works on detection and characterization of

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first det ...

atmospheres.

Education and career

López-Morales studied

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

during her undergraduate program at

Universidad de La Laguna Universidad (Spanish for "university") may refer to: Places * Universidad, San Juan, Puerto Rico * Universidad (Madrid) Football clubs * Universidad SC, a Guatemalan football club that represents the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala ...

, in the

Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; ) or Canaries are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean and the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, Autonomous Community of Spain. They are located in the northwest of Africa, with the closest point to the cont ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. She received her PhD in

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

from the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public university, public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolli ...

in 2004. After completing her doctoral degree, she was a Carnegie

postdoctoral A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

fellow from 2004 until 2010 at the Carnegie Science Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) in

Washington, DC Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

. During her tenure at the Carnegie Science DTM, López-Morales was also a postdoc at the

NASA Astrobiology Institute The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) was established in 1998 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) "to develop the field of astrobiology and provide a scientific framework for flight missions." In December 2019 the institute' ...

(NAI). In 2007, López-Morales was awarded a Hubble Fellowship. While at the NAI, she worked on two different projects, ''From Molecular Clouds to Habitable Planetary Systems'' and ''Looking Outward: Studies of the Physical and Chemical Evolution of Planetary Systems''.

Work

Between 2010 and 2012, López-Morales returned to Spain to join the Institute of Space Sciences in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

, Spain, where she was awarded a prestigious Ramón y Cajal Fellowship. She joined the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) as a Federal Government Scientist in 2012. In 2014–2015, she was a fellow at the

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, is an institute of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, where she worked on ''Searching for Atmospheric Signatures of Other Worlds''. She was Deputy Associate Director Science at the CfA in 2023-2024, before she joined the Space Telescope Science Institute in late 2024. López-Morales is currently the Associate Director for Science at the Space Telescope Science Institute, where she also leads a research group using

spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectra. In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectro ...

techniques to characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets with observations from the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope. Previously, she led the Exoplanet Spectroscopy Survey (ACCESS) project where she investigated optical properties of exoplanet atmospheres using ground-based instrumentation on the Magellan Telescopes in Chile. Between 2016-2022 she was Co-PI of the PanCET project, the largest exoplanet atmospheres program awarded time on the Hubble Space Telescope. López-Morales' work also focuses on the discovery and characterization of terrestrial exoplanets using

HARPS-N __NOTOC__ HARPS-N, the ''High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher for the Northern hemisphere'' is a high-precision radial-velocity spectrograph, installed at the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, a 3.58-metre telescope located at the Roqu ...

, a high-resolution optical spectrograph with broad wavelength coverage installed at the Telescopopio Nazionale Galileo in the Canary Islands, Spain.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:López-Morales, Mercedes Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Harvard Fellows Spanish astrophysicists University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics people 21st-century Spanish physicists Spanish women scientists 21st-century Spanish astronomers