Elena Manjavacas

Elena Manjavacas graduated in 2010 in Physics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain).  In 2011, she obtained her Master in Astrophysics from the Universidad Complutense and Autonoma de Madrid (Spain).  While continuing studies 2011 to 2015 at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (Heidelberg, Germany), she completed her PhD thesis in the field of Low-Mass Stars, Brown Dwarfs and Exoplanets.

Returning to Spain in 2015, she held her first postdoctoral position at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC). The detailed work was on the commissioning of EMIR, a near-infrared multi object spectrograph installed at the 10-m GTC telescope in La Palma (Spain). 

In 2016 she accepted her second postdoctoral position, which brought her to the United States, working at the Steward Observatory (University of Arizona). The use of WFC3 instrument at Hubble Space Telescope allowed a continuation of the research on the flux variability of brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects.

At the conclusion of her postdoctoral position in late 2018, she transitioned to a position as Staff Astronomer at the W. M. Keck Observatory, in Hawaii, which she held from January 2019 through October 2020.   

Presently, Dr. Manjavacas resides in Baltimore, MD and is the ESA/AURA Astronomer at STScI for the NIRSpec instrument, onboard the JWST telescope.

Education:

PhD in Astronomy, University of Heidelberg, Germany
MA in Astronomy, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
BA in Physics, Universidad de Madrid, Spain

Science Interests:

• Low-Mass Stars
• Brown Dwarfs
• Giant Exoplanets

Research Topics:  Exoplanets. Instrumentation, Other

Professional Websites:
Website

ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0192-6887