About Eric Nielsen

Eric Nielsen is a research scientist in the Kavli Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University. He obtained his PhD in astronomy at the University of Arizona, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the SETI Institute.  His research interests include searches for exoplanets, brown dwarfs, and the demographics of giant planets. He has collaborated in a number of planet-hunting surveys, trying to directly image giant planets around young nearby stars, including the ongoing Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey (GPIES) using the Gemini-South Telescope in Chile. This work includes the discovery of 51 Eridani b, a planet two-and-a-half times more massive than Jupiter. Nielsen is working to apply lessons learned from these ground-based surveys to future space-based missions that will image planets similar to Jupiter and Earth found orbiting distant stars.

Registration is not required. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

We will also be streaming the lecture live onour Facebook page a few minutes before the start time.