Sarah Tuttle
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Sarah Tuttle | |
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| Alma mater | University of California, Santa Cruz Columbia University |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Washington |
Sarah Tuttle is an astrophysicist and assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Washington.[1] Tuttle builds spectrographs to detect nearby galaxies, including work on VIRUS[2] (the Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph) installed on McDonald Observatory's Hobby–Eberly Telescope to study dark energy, and FIREBall (Faint Intergalactic medium Redshifted Emission Balloon), the world's first fiber fed ultraviolet spectrograph.[3][4][5]
Tuttle was born and raised in Santa Cruz,[6] studied physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and graduated with a B.Sc in 2001.[7] From 2001 to 2002, she worked for Add-Vision in Scotts Valley as a research scientist,[7] and was part of the team that built the first screen-printed polymer light emitting diodes.[8]
Tuttle received a M.Sc and M.Phil in astronomy from Columbia University in 2006 and 2007,[9] and obtained her Ph.D in 2010,[7] working with David Schiminovich on the Faint Intergalactic medium Redshifted Emission Balloon (FIREBall).[3][4][5] Tuttle built the world's first fiber fed ultraviolet spectrograph, which launched on FIREBall in 2009.[5][10]
Research and career
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Tuttle's research applies novel hardware approaches to spectrograph instrumentation design, particularly aimed to isolate star formation regulation in galaxies through emission and infall from the interstellar medium.[11]
During her Ph.D. at Columbia, Tuttle built the spectrograph for FIREBall, a balloon-borne telescope that is coupled to an ultraviolet spectrograph and designed to discover the intergalactic medium (IGM) in emission.[12][10] The FIREBall spectrograph built by Tuttle was the world's first fiber fed ultraviolet spectrograph and placed upper constraints on IGM emission.[5][10]
Tuttle served as the lead for the Hobby–Eberly Telescope's VIRUS detector from 2010 until 2012, where she prototyped, finalized and characterized the VIRUS spectrograph.[13][14][15][16][17] The instrument consists of 156 spectroscopic channels fed by 34944 fiberoptic channels, covering a 22 arcminute field of view.[18] Tuttle and her colleagues' current astrophysics work still utilizes VIRUS data.[19]
In 2016 she joined the University of Washington as an assistant professor.[11] As of May 2019, Tuttle was leading the recommissioning of the KOSMOS spectrograph for the Apache Point Observatory, an instrument originally stationed at Kitt Peak Observatory.[11][20]
Her science-outreach work includes appearances on the podcast 365 Days of Astronomy in 2009 and writing for The Toast in 2014.[9][4][21] She regularly appears as an astronomy expert in articles in The Seattle Times, The Mercury News and Gizmodo.[22][23][24][25] In 2014, the National Academy of Sciences honored her as a Kavli Fellow.[26][27] Tuttle has also contributed to American Astronomical Society workshops and supported new guidelines to build a more diverse and inclusive environment.[28]
