Charlotte Minsky

Astronomy & Planetary Science

I like planets and atmospheres and small bodies of all Solar Systems, but especially ones ⪆150 AUs away.

In 2022, I'll be starting a PhD program studying planetary science in Robin Wordsworth's group at Harvard.

At MIT, I majored in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences with a concentration in Planetary Science & Astronomy, and did various research things including being a cog in the NASA/MIT TESS mission and writing a senior thesis about trying to use radial velocity data to look at exoplanet transmission spectra in a new way.

You can hear me chatting with Bill Nye and Corey Powell about looking for exoplanets here.

History

I research/am interested in things in the blob of topics whose contours are very roughly defined by the phrases "history of science," "history of tech," "settler colonialism," "20th-century Middle East," "land use," and "infrastructure."

In 2021-2022, I'll be pursuing an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science as a Gates Cambridge scholar at the University of Cambridge.

At MIT, I also did a joint major in History and Computer Science (which was basically a History major with some CS classes tacked on). My senior thesis was about settler colonialism and the establishment of the first permanently occupied mountaintop observatory.

During undergrad I also:

• ...helped edit a book! It's called Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprisings, it's by Pouya Alimagham, it's about the 2009 Green Uprisings in Iran, it was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020, and it's available here.
• ..was part of the start of the MIT and Slavery project, where I researched MIT's relationship to the border states and southern Reconstruction economy. You can read these articles or watch these videos or listen to a podcast about it to learn more.
• ...was a project manager at the MIT Digital Humanities Lab and worked on analyzing gendered language in English novels.