Kim Morel

M.Sc. Student, Université de Montréal

Kim completed her bachelor’s degree in physics with an astrophysics orientation at Université de Montréal in the winter of 2022. In her first undergraduate year, she joined the iREx team as a summer intern under the supervision of David Lafrenière. After two internships, Kim was able to confirm her desire to continue astrophysical research. The last one she completed allowed her to learn more about NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph), the Canadian instrument on board of the James Webb Space Telescope. More precisely, she worked on the SOSS (Single-Object Slitless Spectroscopy) observing mode of the instrument simulator to test its proper functioning and validate the effectiveness of spectral extraction methods.

Now that the James Webb Space Telescope is launched, Kim will analyze spectral data collected by the NIRISS instrument as her master’s project. Still under the supervision of professor David Lafrenière, her goal will be to characterize the gas giant WASP-80b’s atmosphere, an exoplanet detectable by the transit method.

Supervisor

David Lafrenière

Kim Morel
M.Sc. Student, Université de Montréal