Hello! My name is Ryan Rubenzahl (he/him). I use the radial velocity (RV) technique to understand the demographics of exoplanets in our galaxy. I'm particularly motivated to advance RV capabilities to be sensitive to Earth-Sun analogs. Towards this, I built the "Solar Calibrator" to study stellar activity up-close on our nearest Sun-like star.
I am currently rebuilding my website (because I upgraded Hugo and it broke everything) -- stay tuned as I transfer and update to this new site.
I'm a part of the the Keck Planet Finder instrument and science team: check out our commissioning progress!
I built the Solar Calibrator to study stellar activity on the Sun with KPF.
I use RV spectrographs to measure the (mis)alignment between an exoplanet's orbit and its host star.
I regularly participate in our astronomy outreach program at Caltech, including stargazing events on campus, on sidewalks in downtown Pasadena, and in National Parks like Death Valley.
I gave a public lecture for CaltechAstro outreach on our YouTube channel about how radial velocity spectrographs work and why stellar activity is such a big problem.
I'm a founding member of Caltech Grads and Postdocs United, the active effort at Caltech to form a labor union for graduate and postdoctoral researchers. Please reach out if you have unionization questions and/or are interested in forming a higher-ed labor union at your institution!
I believe we can all do our best work when economic barriers to living and working in the US are removed. That's why I and other Caltech grad students helped collect over 15,000 signatures to win the strongest rent control and just-cause eviction protections in the country, right here in Pasadena CA.