Juliana Garcia-Mejia

Dr. Juliana García-Mejía (hOO – lee – AH – nuh, Gahr – see – ah, meh – HEE – ah) is broadly interested in developing novel astronomical instrumentation to enable the study of exoplanets, their atmospheres, and their low mass stellar hosts. Juliana is the Principal Investigator of The Tierras Observatory, a new 1.3-m ultra-precise fully automated photometer located atop Mt. Hopkins, Arizona.

Having spent her entire Ph.D. building Tierras, she is currently focused on using the facility to uncover temperate terrestrial planets, search for moons around exoplanets, and study their low mass stellar hosts. Juliana is also pursuing the design of a high throughput, extremely high resolution pathfinder spectrograph to enable narrow-wavelength atmospheric structure and velocity dynamic studies of exoplanets, and to expand cosmochronological and magnetic field studies of stars of varied spectral types. In the future, this instrument could enable the detection of molecular oxygen in a terrestrial exoplanet atmosphere.