Susan E. Mullally

Dr. Susan E. Mullally (née Thompson) is an expert in archives, exoplanets, and white dwarf stars. She is currently a Mission Scientist in the Data Science Mission Office and the PI of the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). Previously she worked as the Deputy Project Scientist for JWST and as an Astronomical Data Scientist for MAST. Prior to her employment at STScI, Dr. Mullally was a scientist for the Kepler mission and assistant director of the Whole Earth Telescope. Notable scientific work includes using JWST to search for planets around white dwarf stars, adopting cloud and developing machine learning techniques to create catalogs of transiting planets and discovering tidally-distorted, eccentric binary stars known as heartbeat stars. Dr. Mullally enjoys giving outreach talks and most recently has been found talking about astronomy to hikers on top of a mountain in Ireland and to life-long learners in South Carolina.

Education:

PhD in Astronomy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
MS in Physics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
BA in Physics, Hanover College

Science Interests:

• Occurrence rates of exoplanets
• Removing False Alarms from exoplanet catalogs
• Mode Identification in pulsating white dwarf stars
• Detection of exoplanet atmospheres

Research Topics: Exoplanets; Binary stars; White dwarf stars

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-7106-4683