My life’s work is dedicated to sharply conceived science, words, and art.

I am co-discoverer of, and the first to see and directly study, an alien world with many similarities to Jupiter in another solar system. I am a tenured Professor and Curator in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) with an additional appointment at Columbia University.

Since 1994, I have been studying objects smaller than stars, including anything “substellar” (less massive or with radii smaller than stars), such as so-called brown dwarfs and exoplanets, particularly those in orbit around stars other than the Sun. 

I also have a passion for objects that exhibit what we physicists call quantum degeneracy, including neutron stars and white dwarfs. I love degenerates, and some say I am one. I suppose I am a degenerate astrophysicist.

During the past three decades, I have produced over 300 publications, mostly peer-reviewed research articles, but also several patents, numerous popular science pieces, op-eds, grants of over $13M, plus many non-fiction book chapters, and instrumentation papers.

My research consists of designing and building new types of astronomical instruments in my optics lab, fielding them at remote observatories around the world, and using them to discover absurd denizens of the universe. 

I have advised many research scientists, students, and postdoctoral fellows, all of whom have gone on to spectacular careers. They have taken our fundamental research into detecting and understanding faint objects next to bright stars to form the basis of several major ground and space-based observatories, including parts of the James Webb Space Telescope, the soon-to-be-launched Roman Space Telescope and the nascent Habitable Worlds Observatory, NASA’s next Great Observatory undergoing design now, to find signs of biological activity in nearby solar systems.

I have served on many national and international committees that advise government agencies and observatories, including NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council, and some European agencies. Most recently, I worked as a special government employee on the highest-level federal advisory committee for the NASA Astrophysics Division, and as a board member for the International Gemini Observatories, and I continue to serve on NASA’s Exoplanet Technology Assessment Committee.

I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, earned a Physics BA from Columbia (1994) and a PhD in Astrophysics from Caltech (1999).  I held the NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC-Berkeley and joined AMNH in late 2001, leading to a faculty appointment there and at Columbia in 2004.

I am an advocate for civil liberties. I think all decent people should be treated equally and have the same rights.