Rebecca Oppenheimer, Ph.D.
Curator and Professor, Department of Astrophysics, Division of Physical Sciences, American Museum of Natural History
After obtaining degrees from Columbia University and Caltech, Oppenheimer joined the research staff at the American Museum of Natural History in 2001, where she built a new optics laboratory dedicated to exoplanet imaging. She co-discovered the first substellar object ever seen orbiting another star, leading to a whole new subfield of astrophysics. Many of the techniques developed and deployed by her group are used in projects worldwide and soon in space.