Amanda Gulbis

SALT Astronomer

Amanda is originally from Ohio, in the U.S.A.   She obtained a PhD in Astrophysical, Planetary, and Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2002. Her graduate work involved experimental studies of the interaction between dust and near-surface plasmas, with application to planetary environments (specifically the Moon). In 2003, she moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and began observing small objects in the outer solar system. Specifically, her interests include Kuiper Belt object (KBO) orbital distributions and photometry, and stellar occultation observations by Pluto, Charon, and KBOs.

She joined SALT in June 2008, and she maintains a visiting scientist appointment at MIT in order to continue collaborative studies of Pluto’s atmosphere and development of high-speed optical instrumentation. Please see her webpages http://amandagulbis.saao.ac.za/ and http://www.mit.edu/~gulbis/ for more details.