Ewan Douglas

Ewan Douglas

Assistant Professor, Department of Astronomy, & Assistant Astronomer, Steward Observatory

Dr. Ewan Douglas joined the University of Arizona Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory in the Spring of 2019. His research focuses on space instrumentation, wavefront sensing and control, and high-contrast imaging of extrasolar planets and debris disks. Dr. Douglas is the lead payload engineer and project scientist for the Deformable Mirror Demonstration Mission, a CubeSat under construction to test technologies for imaging of Earthlike exoplanets by demonstrating adaptive optics in space using a microelectromechanical deformable mirror. As a postdoc since 2016 in the MIT Prof. Kerri Cahoy's Space Telecommunications, Astronomy, and Radiation Laboratory, Ewan has also worked on new approaches for sensing wavefront errors in space telescopes using lasers on small formation flying spacecraft as guide stars, techniques for managing systems engineering requirements that have been applied to the NASA WFIRST mission, and is leading a team to conduct coronagraphic observations of the Epsilon Eridani star system with the Hubble Space Telescope's STIS coronagraph.

Research Areas
Instrumentation and Detectors