Arpita Roy

Alumni

Australian National University

Biography

Dr. Roy works on exoplanet discovery and characterization using the new wave of extreme precision spectroscopy instruments. She is Project Scientist for the Keck Planet Finder instrument, and an architect of the Habitable Zone Planet Finder and NEID instruments, spanning both the optical and near-infrared in search of Earth analogs. Combining hardware design along with tailored software development and consideration of astrophysical and systematic false positives, Dr. Roy aims to ultimately use these high-fidelity instruments for the direct detection of planetary light, to populate our sparse census of exoplanet atmospheres for future flagship mission design and target selection. Dr. Roy joined STScI in 2020 as an Assistant Astronomer, with the added functional role of Instrument Scientist on the NIRISS team for the James Webb Space Telescope.