Origins Institute Public Lecture with Natalie Hinkel

Presented on: Monday, December 14th at 7:00 PM EST

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Understanding Planets Outside of the Solar System: From Star to Planet to Microbe

Dr. Natalie Hinkel is a Senior Research Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and a Co-Investigator for the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) research network at Arizona State University. As a planetary astrophysicist she looks at the compositions of stars, or the element abundances, that are near to the Sun. She created and maintains the largest database of stellar elemental abundances, the Hypatia Catalog -- named after one of the first known female astronomers. She uses data in the Hypatia Catalog to understand the interior structure of planets outside of our Solar System, or exoplanets, since it’s not currently possible to observe the surface of an exoplanet. She has also used machine learning algorithms (similar to Netflix!) to predict which stars likely have planets based only on their abundances.

Dr. Hinkel is a strong science advocate and has been involved in numerous articles, online interviews, and podcasts. She previously presented her work at TEDxNashville 2017 and TEDxSanAntonio 2018! You can find her on Twitter (@natalie_hinkel) or online: www.nataliehinkel.com

Come discover exoplanets with Dr. Hinkel!