Expertise
Optical telescope, wavefront control system, and instrument design for the direct imaging of extra solar planets.Research Interests
My research interests are in the direct imaging and characterization of exoplanets and their environments. I am the principle investigator of the PICTURE-D NASA balloon mission. I focus primarily on the design, building and testing of optical coronagraph instruments and wavefront control systems.Education
Ph.D., Astronomy, Boston University, 2013
B.S. Physics, Brown University, 2005
Biosketch
Christopher mendillo, Ph.D., grew up in Warwick, RI and earned my Bachelor of Science in Physics at Brown University and Ph.D in Astronomy from Boston University. I run a research lab at the Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology (LoCSST) in the Wannalancit building on East Campus. Outside of work I enjoy playing music, building things and baking bread.Selected Awards and Honors
NASA Roman Technology Fellowship recipient, 2022Selected Publications
C. B. Mendillo, K. Hewawasam, J. Martel, T. Potter, T. A. Cook, and S. Chakrabarti, “Balloon flight demonstration of coronagraph focal plane wavefront correction with PICTURE-C,” in Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS), 9(02), May 2023.C. B. Mendillo, K. Hewawasam, J. Martel, T. Potter, T. A. Cook, and S. Chakrabarti, “The PICTURE-C exoplanetary imaging balloon mission: First flight results and second flight prepa- ration,” in Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets X, S. B. Shaklan and G. J. Ruane, eds., 11823, pp. 313 – 321, International Society for Optics and Photonics, SPIE, 2021.
C. B. Mendillo, K. Hewawasam, J. Martel, T. A. Cook, S. Chakrabarti, F. Snik, and D. Doel- man, “Dual-polarization electric field conjugation and applications for vector vortex corona- graphs,” in Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets X, S. B. Shaklan and G. J. Ruane, eds., 11823, pp. 586 – 594, International Society for Optics and Photonics, SPIE, 2021.
C. B. Mendillo, K. Hewawasam, G. A. Howe, J. Martel, T. A. Cook, and S Chakrabarti. The PICTURE-C exoplanetary direct imaging balloon mission: first flight preparation. In Stuart B. Shaklan, editor, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets IX, volume 11117, pages 101 – 111. International Society for Optics and Photonics, SPIE, 2019.
C. B. Mendillo, K. Hewawasam, G. A. Howe, J. Martel, T. A. Cook, and S. Chakrabarti, “De- coupling the image-plane and low-order wavefront sensors for the PICTURE-C coronagraph,” in Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets IX, S. B. Shaklan, ed., 11117, pp. 559 – 565, International Society for Optics and Photonics, SPIE, 2019.
C. B. Mendillo, G. A. Howe, K. Hewawasam, J. Martel, T. A. Cook, and S. Chakrabarti. Polarization aberration analysis for the picture-c exoplanetary coronagraph. Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems, 5(2):025003, April 2019.
C. B. Mendillo, G. A. Howe, K. Hewawasam, J. Martel, S. C. Finn, T. A. Cook, and S. Chakrabarti. Optical tolerances for the picture-c mission: error budget for electric field conjugation, beam walk, surface scatter, and polarization aberration. volume 10400 of Proc. SPIE, page 17, 2017.
C. B. Mendillo, J. Brown, J. Martel, G. A. Howe, K. Hewasawam, S. C. Finn, T. A. Cook, S. Chakrabarti, E. S. Douglas, D. Mawet, O. Guyon, G. Singh, J. Lozi, K. L. Cahoy, and A. D. Marinan. The low-order wavefront sensor for the picture-c mission. In Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets VII, volume 9605 of Proc. SPIE, page 19, September 2015.
C. B. Mendillo, S. Chakrabarti, T. A. Cook, B. A. Hicks, and B. F. Lane. Flight demonstration of a milliarcsecond pointing system for direct exoplanet imaging. Appl. Opt., 51(29):7069–7079, Oct 2012.
C. B. Mendillo, B. A. Hicks, T. A. Cook, T. G. Bifano, D. A. Content, B. F. Lane, B. M. Levine, D. Rabin, S. R. Rao, R. Samuele, E. Schmidtlin, M. Shao, J. K. Wallace, andS. Chakrabarti. Picture: a sounding rocket experiment for direct imaging of an extrasolar planetary environment. Proc. SPIE, 8442, September 2012.
E. S. Douglas, C. B. Mendillo, T. A. Cook, K. L. Cahoy, and S. Chakrabarti, “Wavefront sensing in space: flight demonstration ii of the picture sounding rocket payload,” Journal of Astro- nomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 4, p. 019003, Jan. 2018