Dr. Lisa Prato

Stellar Astronomy/Exoplanets

PhD State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998

After leaving Stony Brook in 1998, Dr. Prato held two post-doctoral fellowships at the University of California, Los Angeles, before moving to Lowell Observatory in 2004. Most of her work exploits the power of high-resolution infrared spectroscopy; she also uses photometry and interferometry, and millimeter and visible light wavelengths.

Because most young stars are in gravitationally bound double systems, these are important research areas. The smallest separation pairs, spectroscopic binaries, with periods of a few days to years, are so interesting that they’ve spawned additional projects for Dr. Prato on pre-main sequence and main sequence M star spectroscopic binaries, young and field brown dwarf spectroscopic binaries, and very old population II spectroscopic binaries.

Dr. Prato maintains a web page which includes a sortable young binary star database and a high-resolution H-band spectral catalogue of low-mass spectral type standard stars. 

Like most Lowell astronomers, Dr. Prato serves as a mentor to a variety of astronomy students and researchers.

Check out Dr. Prato’s webpage.