Dr. Maaike van Kooten was awarded the prestigious 2025 New Horizons in Physics Prize by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. She shares the honour with Dr. Rebecca Jensen-Clem (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Dr. Sebastiaan Haffert (Leiden University) for their work demonstrating new adaptive optics techniques that will allow for the direct detection of the smallest exoplanets. This prize is awarded by the Breakthrough Foundation to early-career researchers who have already produced important work.
"Being awarded this prize feels a bit surreal. I never thought about being nominated, let alone winning," says Dr. van Kooten, a research officer with the NRC's Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre (HAA). "I was fortunate to have a very productive and positive postdoctoral experience working with Dr. Rebecca Jensen-Clem, who gave me incredible opportunities that made this research possible. I look back on those 2 years and am still amazed by the work we did during on-sky testing of our new technologies."
On-sky testing of a new instrument or technology is when researchers move from the lab to a real-world environment, in this case, a large ground-based telescope. Considered the gold standard for advancing instrumentation and technology design in astronomy, on-sky testing is a critical phase in the development of technology and instruments.
There are a number of factors that can impact the quality of an astronomer's observations. For optical astronomers that use ground-based telescopes one of those factors is atmospheric turbulence, which is caused by the irregular movement of air in the Earth's atmosphere. Similar to the way the horizon looks wavy when driving on a hot day, atmospheric turbulence distorts light travelling from space and results in blurry images, making it challenging to obtain precise measurements.
In an effort to address the effects of this turbulence, Dr. van Kooten advanced a novel algorithm, called predictive wavefront control, that predicts atmospheric changes and quickly adjusts the flexible mirror in a telescope's adaptive optics system to reduce blurriness. Dr. van Kooten and Dr. Jensen-Clem tested the technology on-sky on the adaptive optics bench of the ground-based Keck II telescope over multiple nights using both dedicated engineering time and science time. The algorithm allows for improved image clarity and contrast, especially when looking at objects close to bright stars, like exoplanets.
"The ultimate goals are for the W. M. Keck Observatory to offer this as a regular observing mode to astronomers, and that Keck's next generation instruments for direct imaging of exoplanets will rely on our algorithm to meet their performance requirements," she explains.
Immediately after completing her postdoc, Dr. van Kooten joined HAA's world-leading optical science group. This group has contributed to developing and implementing adaptive optics systems for international telescopes, such as Gemini North.
"Canada, and specifically the NRC, have a long-standing history of advancing the field of optical astronomy. The acknowledgement of Dr. van Kooten's research by the Breakthrough Foundation is a testament to the calibre of researchers we have," says Luc Simard, the Director General of HAA. "Dr. van Kooten and the team not only continue to push the boundaries of optical instrumentation, but are also redefining the possible in astronomical observation."
Dr. van Kooten currently provides adaptive optics support of real-time computing for the Gemini Planet Imager upgrade and for the upgrade of its calibration unit for the Gemini North telescope. She is also developing and testing emerging technologies for next generation instruments using REVOLT, the NRC's test bed for on-sky testing of adaptive optics technologies. In addition, she is currently designing and testing a pyramid wavefront sensor system and leading a project using single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) arrays, which are essentially high-speed cameras that can take 96,000 images per second. She was also awarded funding under the NRC's New Beginnings initiative for her project to improve adaptive optics systems using machine learning in combination with pyramid wavefront sensing.