Debra Fischer
Astronomy, Yale University
Research Focus
About Debra
Fischer began hunting for exoplanets in 1997 by measuring Doppler shifts in the spectra of stars. She has discovered hundreds of extrasolar planets with this technique, including the first known multiple planet system in 1999. Her team is developing next generation spectrometers, statistical methods and machine learning analysis techniques to transition from current state of the art precision of 1 m/s to 0.1 m/s to detect Earth analogues that will be targets in the search for life on other worlds. Fischer was PI for the CHIRON spectrograph (at CTIO in Chile), the VUES spectrograph (at Möletai Observatory in Lithuania) and EXPRES (at the Lowell Observatory DCT in Arizona). In addition to her primary appointment in Astronomy, Fischer has joint appointments at Yale in the departments of Physics, Geology and Geophysics, and Statistics and Data Science. She is currently the dean of academic affairs for the faculty of arts and science at Yale.
Honors
Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science
Eugene Higgins Professor, Yale University
Education
Postdoc
Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, 2003
Marcy Exoplanets, San Francisco State University, 1999
Ph.D.
Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, 05/1998
Master's
Physics, San Francisco State University, 05/1992
Bachelor's
BS, Nursing, University of Iowa, 05/1975
