The highly-coveted NSF CAREER award will allow astronomy associate professor Scott Gaudi to take his scientific investigations to the next level, supporting his new project, The Demographics of Exoplanets, an effort to create a new stellar map for exoplanets—those planets that lay beyond our solar system.

Several different research methods have been used to find exoplanets in addition to Gaudi’s preferred method of gravitational lensing (a star crossing in front of another magnifies the light from the more distant star like a lens). Each method has different strengths and weaknesses, which produce representational inconsistencies.

Gaudi’s goal is to compare these various methods on a rigorous statistical basis, then stitch them together like a patchwork quilt to get a better global sense of the actual demographics of exoplanets.

Already well-known as an extraordinarily successful planet-hunter, Gaudi has been directly involved in worldwide collaborations that have found five of the eight planets discovered using gravitational lensing. Also, he led a group that made the first-ever discovery of two planets at once using this method.

In 2009, Gaudi was given the American Astronomical Society’s highest award for young astronomers, the Helen B. Warner Prize, in recognition of “significant and broad theoretical contributions to the field of exoplanet research, particularly in the area of microlensing detection and characterization of planetary systems, as well as for planets detected via transit and traditional radial velocity techniques.”

Earlier, Astronomy Magazine had named Gaudi one of the “10 Rising Stars of Astronomy,” while Discovery Magazine put him on the “20 Scientists to Watch in 20 Years” list.

Gaudi, who did his graduate work at Ohio State and credits Ohio State with “making me an astronomer,” always knew he wanted to return here to teach one day. After completing two extremely prestigious fellowships: a Hubble Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; and a Menzel Fellowship from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he did.

Coming back to Ohio State for Gaudi was an important career goal. Clearly, he could have gone anywhere, but Ohio State’s astronomy department is not only stellar boasting some of the world’s leading scholars, it is something even more important to Gaudi: totally committed to graduate education.

Now chair of astronomy’s graduate studies program, a responsibility he cheerfully volunteered to take on, Gaudi said,” Focusing on the success of every graduate student is an important goal for the department and for me. Believe it or not, this is not true everywhere. We really believe in the idea that no graduate student should be left behind. I think the fact that I am passionate about graduate education is one of the reasons I was awarded the grant.”

The NSF CAREER Awards are a significant investment by the National Science Foundation in developing the careers of the country’s outstanding young scientists. These highly-competitive awards indicate the recipients already have a body of work that clearly indicates promise of long-term contributions to their field. Additionally, built into these awards is a strong component for graduate education and outreach, which Gaudi looks forward to implementing in a variety of exciting ways.