# Debra Fischer

Debra Ann Fischer is an American astronomer who is the Eugene Higgins professor of astronomy at Yale University researching detection and characterization of exoplanets. She has detected hundreds of exoplanets and was part of the team to discover the first known multiple-planet system.

## Education

Fischer received her degree in nursing from the University of Iowa in 1975, a masters of science in physics from San Francisco State University in 1992, and her PhD in astrophysics from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1998.

## Research and career

Fischer has co-authored more than 300 papers on dwarf stars and exoplanets. In two papers with Jeff Valenti, she quantified a correlation between the chemical composition of host stars and the formation of orbiting gas giant planets. She led the N2K Consortium with Gregory P. Laughlin, detecting dozens of exoplanets around metal-rich stars at Keck Observatory, Subaru Observatory, and the Magellan Observatory. Her work "The Twenty Five Year Lick Planet Search" is summarized in a 2014 paper. In 2015, she organized an international workshop on Extreme Precision Radial Velocities at Yale University and led the conference proceedings paper with 55 co-authors. With the Oxford Zooniverse team, Fischer co-founded the Planet Hunters Citizen Science project.
Fischer has worked on instruments to improve measurement sensitivity for the detection of exoplanets. In 2011, she started the Fiber-optic Improved Next-generation Doppler Search for Exo-Earths with the Planetary Society, an improvement that helped planet hunters find smaller, more Earth-like extrasolar planets. In 2014, she worked with colleagues at Yale University on a microcomb for precise wavelength calibration. She was the principal investigator for three spectrographs: CHIRON, the CTIO High Resolution Spectrometer, VUES, the Vilnius University Echelle Spectrograph and EXPRES, the EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph.
Fischer and colleagues have also helped to advance statistical and machine learning methods to improve data analysis and sensitivity to low mass planets. Fischer served as the Division Director at the National Science Foundation from 2021 - 2023.

## Projects and Contributions

When Fischer discovered the first multiple planet system in 1999, she contributed to the acknowledgement of planet formation by using an analysis that identified and collaborated the impact of structures of planets and their gas giants and even the chemical composition of host stars.
Fischer also created a project called planethunters.org, which helped with her and her organization with planet detection. According to Fischer, her "Planet Hunters" project was based on the Kepler Project, further resulting her and her group's expectations of their project to exceed successfully.

## Honors and awards

* 1993 Graduate Student Fellowship, NSF
* 1994 Marilyn C. Davis Scholarship, UCSC
* 1997 California Space Grant, NASA
* 2002 Carl Sagan Award, American Astronautical Society
* 2004 Benjamin Dean Lecturer, California Academy of Science
* 2004 Professional Astronomer for the Communication of Science, Amateur Astronomer Society of Northern California
* 2005-2007 Cottrell Science Scholar
* 2009 Radcliffe Institute Fellow: Sept 2009 – June 2010
* 2010 Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering
* 2012 Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
* 2016 Hall of Fame Inductee the San Francisco State University
* 2020 Elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society
* 2021 class of Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
* 2021 Elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences