Joseph Twicken

My background is in signal processing, and my interests lie in astronomy, astrophysics, and planetary science. I entered the doctoral program in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in 1983. I joined a research group in the Space, Telecommunications and Radioscience Laboratory (STARLab) that was funded at the time by the NASA Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program. Detection of narrowband radio signals of intelligent extraterrestrial origin represented a challenging signal processing problem. My research helped lead to the specification of a Multi-Channel Spectrum Analyzer (MCSA) with 10 MHz bandwidth and 15 million frequency channels. My group also developed a custom VLSI processor which was named the SETI DSP Engine. This device was optimized to quickly perform the Discrete Fourier Transforms required of the MCSA design. It was a proud moment for me years later when I encountered a copy of this chip on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

The SETI Institute was founded while I was a doctoral student to increase the research opportunities available from limited SETI funding. I joined the SETI Institute in 1988 following completion of my degree at Stanford and worked with a small group to implement a prototype MCSA. The prototype employed dozens of the custom SETI DSP Engines which had now been fabricated and tested. Late in the year we demonstrated a working prototype to our research sponsors and other friends of SETI. A later revision of this MCSA was employed in the Project Phoenix SETI search at the Institute.

I left the SETI Institute following the development and demonstration of the MCSA prototype to experience life in the for-profit sector. I returned to the Stanford STARLab in 1991 to work with a Radio Science research group. Over the following 16 years, I developed and operated science processing pipelines in support of Radio Science investigations associated with a number of NASA and ESA planetary missions: Mars Observer, Magellan, Galileo, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Express, and New Horizons. The investigations focused on planetary atmospheres, ionospheres, surfaces, and gravity fields. My time at Stanford ended following the retirement of my long-time supervisor and the ultimate loss of communication with the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.

I rejoined the SETI Institute in 2007 to work on the Kepler Mission. The project involved measuring the brightness of roughly 170,000 stars continuously for four years and searching the stellar light curves for signatures of transiting planets (including Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars). I began my involvement with Kepler as a Senior Scientific Programmer in the Science Operations Center (SOC) at the NASA Ames Research Center and after a few years I became the Lead Scientific Programmer. The SOC was responsible for designing, implementing, operating, maintaining, and documenting the Kepler Science Data Processing Pipeline. The Kepler Mission was fabulously successful and has revolutionized the world of exoplanet science. In recognition of our effort, the Kepler SOC was awarded the NASA Software of the Year Award in 2010.

Kepler focused on a rich star field. Thousands of planets were discovered, and thousands more candidates remain to be confirmed. The Kepler target stars were distant by design, however, and not particularly amenable to follow-up investigation. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was selected for flight by NASA in 2013. TESS is the next step after Kepler in the exoplanet mission plan at NASA. The spacecraft launched in April 2018 and science operations commenced in July 2018. In the primary mission, TESS will survey most of the sky over a period of two years in search of exoplanets transiting the brightest, and hence, nearest stars. Follow-up observations of the best candidates are performed with ground-based observatories to better characterize the target stars, confirm the planetary nature of the candidates, and determine their masses where possible. The cream of the crop will be observed with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to assess the composition of their atmospheres. Subsequent missions will seek to detect biomarkers in the atmospheres of these planets.

I am currently the Lead Data Scientist in the TESS Science Processing Operations Center (SPOC) at NASA Ames Research Center. We built and now operate the TESS SPOC Science Pipeline. Over one thousand transiting planet candidates were identified in the first year of TESS science operations. The confirmation process is ongoing. Thousands more candidates are expected to be identified in the remaining year of the primary mission and an extended TESS mission that has been approved through 2022.

• NASA Ames Honor Award (2014)“For excellence in the category of contractor employee.”
• NASA Certificate of Appreciation (2011) "For exceptional contributions and leadership in the development of the Kepler data analysis tools.”
• NASA Software of the Year Award (2010)Group award for Kepler Science Operations Center (SOC) Science Processing Pipeline.
• Stanford University School of Engineering Dean’s Award (1997)“For his major role and contributions to the Mars Global Surveyor Mission and other STARLab projects, for his outstanding technical judgment and acumen, and for his excellent representation to outside sponsors.”

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