New Palomar Director and Director of Instrumentation Roles Announced
Mansi Kasliwal (PhD '11), a Caltech professor of astronomy, has been named the new director of Caltech's Palomar Observatory, while Dimitri Mawet, the David Morrisroe Professor of Astronomy at Caltech, has been named the new director of instrumentation of the Caltech Optical Observatories (COO), which includes Palomar as well as the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaiʻi, in which Caltech is a partner.
Both newly created positions will work together with Chris Martin, the director of COO and the Edward C. Stone Professor of Physics, to oversee the flagship organization, one of the largest on campus that includes many faculty, postdocs, students, and a staff of 35 experts who design and build instruments for the telescopes at Palomar and Keck observatories.
"A significant number of faculty in the PMA [Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy] and GPS [Geological and Planetary Sciences] divisions have research efforts centered around COO," Martin says. "With funding challenges ahead in today's climate, strong Caltech leadership is required to maintain these premier facilities. Mansi and Dimitri are well suited to help us lead the way."
Kasliwal studies supernovae and other cosmic "fireworks" that light up the sky. In 2017, she and her colleagues made crucial observations of a spectacular collision between two neutron stars, showing that the event, called a kilonova, had sprayed newly forged gold and other heavy elements into the cosmos. For this work, she received a 2022 New Horizons Prize in Physics. Kasliwal specializes in observing rapidly changing events in the sky, like kilonovae, and has spearhead the development of several infrared-based instruments, including WINTER (Wide-field Infrared Transient Explorer) at Palomar Observatory, which scans the skies for cosmic eruptions. She is also a co-principal investigator of the Zwicky Transient Facility camera at Palomar, which surveys the skies in optical light, catching all kinds of celestial wonders.
Kasliwal will serve as Palomar's first-ever female director, a role that follows in the footsteps of other female pioneers who have worked at Palomar. In this role, she will provide scientific leadership for Palomar and develop a long-term vision for the historic 77-year-old observatory.
"This is where textbooks about astronomy have been written," Kasliwal says of Palomar. "It is still at the forefront of astronomy, and its five integrated telescopes on the mountaintop are like no other."
Kasliwal will oversee further improvements to instruments at Palomar (such as the Next Generation Palomar Spectrograph), develop new instruments, organize science quarterlies, and build strategic partnerships. "I also want the staff who live and work up on the mountain to be happy," she says. "They are amazing."
Mawet specializes in designing and building instruments to study planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets. In addition to serving as a Caltech professor, he is a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (which is managed by Caltech). At Caltech, he directs the Exoplanet Technology Laboratory, which has developed several instruments for both Palomar and Keck, including the Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer (KPIC), which uses extremely high spectral resolution to observe exoplanets that were previously imaged with other telescopes, revealing details about their composition, "weather," spin rates, and more. The group is also building the Keck Observatory's next-generation HISPEC (High-resolution Infrared Spectrograph for Exoplanet Characterization), in addition to developing technologies for NASA's planned Habitable Worlds Observatory, which would search for signs of life on exoplanets.
Mawet and his team also utilize other non-Caltech instruments to study exoplanets and cool stars known as brown dwarfs. For example, in 2024, the astronomers found that the first brown dwarf to be discovered, called Gliese 229 B, is in fact not a single entity but a pair of orbiting twins.
In his new role as the director of instrumentation for COO, Mawet wants to give the engineers, scientists, postdocs, and students who work on new instruments more room to innovate, and "to propose creative solutions and new technologies that anticipate the needs of future science."
"COO's instrumentation group is truly one of Caltech's crown jewels, an exceptional team who design and build world-class astronomical instruments," he says. "Palomar and Keck have long been incubators of such innovations and strengthening that spirit of collaboration and technical excellence will be key to our continued leadership."