The Exocast team are back and this time joined by the esteemed Nikole Lewis, Professor and Deputy director of the Carl Sagan institute at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, USA. We chat all things career, JWST, the future of exoplanet characterisation with the Roman Space Telescope and Nikole add her favourite Neptune mass exoplanet GJ 436b to the Exocast Adopted Planets archive.

Before Nikole moved to Cornell in 2018 she was at the Space Telescope Science Institute for 4 years where she served as a member of the JWST NIRISS Instrument team, was the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Group Lead, and then went on to become the JWST Project Scientist in charge of all things JWST at STScI. Her career has spanned observations and theoretical modelling of planetary atmospheres using 3D Global Circulation Models (GCMs) to the terrors of working with Spitzer Space Telescope data before applying herself to getting JWST ready for science operations. Perfectly suited to this role, Nikole actually started her career as a physics and mechanical engineering major with an MA in astronomy and worked in industry for several years before coming back to do a PhD in Planetary Science at the University of Arizona working on 3D GCMs.

Exocast-68b: Interview with Nikole Lewis (m4a)