09/10/2026
By Lynne Schaufenbil
Please join the Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology on Thursday, Sept. 17, at 1 p.m. EST for the virtual talk “HWO Yield with Machine Learning Emulators” by Dr. Rhonda Morgan.
Abstract
HWO seeks to obtain spectra on 25 Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of nearby stars. Science performance yield modeling connects potential architectures to science performance. Yield modeling has progressed from calculations on a few point designs to the current ability to simulate thousands of permutations of architectures to explore the whole architecture space and use the resulting data in interesting ways: machine learning emulators that replace the computationally intensive end-to-end yield simulations with a fast model; the ability to invert the emulator model to query which part of architecture space supports specified levels of performance; and how to understand which parts of the architecture space can be traded against each other for better performance.
Bio
Dr. Rhonda Morgan is the deputy chief technologist for the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP). She is the JPL lead for HWO yield modeling and led the ExEP Yield Standards Team common comparison of HabEx and LUVOIR. Her research interests include exoplanets, high contrast imaging, advanced technologies for space telescopes and uncertainty-based design. She received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Caltech and a Ph.D. in optical sciences from the University of Arizona and has been at JPL for 26 years.
To attend, please contact Lynne_Schaufenbil@uml.edu.