Postdoctoral Fellowship: MPS-Ascend: Stellar Signatures: The Impacts of Stellar Activity on Exoplanet Transit Transmission Observations

Guadalupe Tovar Mendoza is awarded an NSF MPS-Ascend Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at Johns Hopkins University. Tovar Mendoza will lead a research program aimed to understand the relationship between exoplanets and their host stars. For the broadening participation component, Tovar Mendoza will partner with an existing prison teaching initiative to develop hands-on STEM lab activities and provide weekly tutoring and mentorship to incarcerated youth and adults. This research will use a data-driven approach to mitigate the impacts of stellar magnetic activity on the measurements and interpretation of exoplanet atmospheres. Tovar Mendoza will use JWST data to develop a stellar flare template customized for infrared observations. She will also develop a novel data-driven approach that integrates stellar flares with spots and faculae to accurately account for stellar contamination in transmission spectra. The proposed research will result in publicly-available tools and models that will enable more robust measurements of JWST exoplanet atmospheres. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.