Malena Rice

Exoplanet characterization


Much of my research is motivated by the goal of better understanding planetary system formation and evolution. As a result, my work involves studying and characterizing the diversity of exoplanets, including the wide range of observed exoplanet compositional and orbital properties. Most recently, I have become quite interested in prospects for exoplanet oblateness and ring detections.

I have worked closely with the Twinkle Space Mission, starting from very early in its planning stages in 2016. During these initial stages, I characterized the scientific capabilities of the Twinkle Space Telescope, a small, low-cost space mission designed for photometric and spectroscopic observations of exoplanet atmospheres. Twinkle will be capable of characterizing hundreds of exoplanet atmospheres during its lifetime, with varying signal-to-noise depending on the observed planets' properties. For more details, see Edwards et al. 2018 below.

I have also observed extensively with the Keck/HIRES instrument as a collaborator with the TESS-Keck Survey. Through these efforts, I have contributed to several observational planet detection and characterization projects, some of which are listed below. I have also contributed to several other projects related to orbit fitting and refinement, the search for habitable planets, and the origins of short-period giant planets.


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