Haghighipour researches the formation and detection of habitable planetary systems, including the detection of habitable planets in binary star systems.
These are worlds with two suns like the planet Tatooine in the Star Wars movies.
The Alexander von Hum-boldt Foundation, based in Bonn, Germany, promotes collaborations between German and non-German scientists and scholars.
The foundation gave Haghighipour the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers to work on planets in binary star systems.
Haghighipour received his doctorate in planetary dynamics in 1999 from University of Missouri-Columbia. After a series of postdoctoral positions at the University of California, Irvine, Northwestern University and Carnegie Institution of Washington, he joined the UH Institute for Astronomy and the UH astrobiology program in 2004.
He has been a member of NASA Astrobiology Institute since its creation in 1998, first through UCLA, then through Carnegie, and since 2004, through UH.
Haghighipour has edited a book about planets in binaries, and he is a member of the planet-binary working group of the Kepler Space Telescope, which is searching for habitable planets.
