Welcome Interview with the Astronomy Department's Newest Faculty
Professor Michael Bottom is the newest addition to our elite class of faculty members within the Astronomy Department, joining in January of 2026. He is the first recipient of the Trumpler-Weaver Endowed Professorship of Astronomy. Prior to coming to Berkeley, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy. Michael received his PhD from Caltech and was an Optical Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.
What first drew you to studying exoplanets and astrophysics as a whole and what continues to inspire and motivate you in the field Today?
I’ve been interested in space as far back as I can remember. The first exoplanet discoveries started happening when I was in high school, and they really captured my imagination. My college actually offered a class on exoplanets, which was unusual at the time, taught by Caleb Scharf, who later compiled the class notes into an excellent textbook on the subject. It was still early days; the Kepler telescope hadn’t launched, for example, and so the class was mainly motivated by the physics. It was fascinating to see how the fundamental laws of physics could be used to understand and make predictions about what was still a very young field. I teach my students the same thing, to approach problems from the fundamentals, with rough calculations to gain insight, before doing a deep dive.
What do you like most about being an experimentalist and what do you find the most rewarding about it?
It’s a lot of fun. Some days you’re doing design, some days you’re hitting things with a wrench, some nights you’re up at the telescope, and then of course you analyze your data. The rewarding part is the process of transforming ideas into instruments that lead to scientific discoveries. For the sort of work we do, you need a working knowledge of optics, mechanics, electronics, vacuum systems, sensors, controls, statistics, in addition to astrophysics. There’s so much to learn and discover in each of those areas, so it never really gets old. When I got started, working in Amber Miller’s cosmic microwave background lab as a college freshman, it was rewarding just to help some of her excellent graduate students and postdocs with some small task. Now, in mid-career, it’s also been hugely rewarding to watch my students develop mastery and go on to do their own great work.
How do recent and upcoming technological advancements expand what kind of questions you can ask?
The question of whether the Earth is the sole “living planet” has been posed since at least the fourth century BC, and considered mainly on philosophical or religious grounds. We’re at the point now where we can ask whether other habitable planets like the Earth exist, not as a philosophical or religious question, but as a scientific one. Indeed, we can even plan to find such planets, since you can take that question and flow it down to technological requirements, like how big a telescope, how sensitive a detector, how stable an optical system, etc, which we are close to meeting after decades of scientific and engineering progress. Building such a telescope, and using it to find nearby habitable planets, will likely happen in the next ten to twenty years, which is very exciting.
Is there any piece of advice you wish you’d have gotten earlier in your career? Or advice you’d give to someone just beginning theirs?
Don’t refuse an opportunity to learn something new in your career, as you never know when it will be useful. Half of my current research program stems from a project my former boss at NASA assigned to me that I was hesitant to take on because I was inexperienced in the area. It’s often the case that things you learn in one area apply very profitably to another. Additionally, as a student, make sure you really master your coursework. There is less time in your future to circle back and pick up on things you skipped or glossed over than you might think.