Don Figer
Director of Center for Detectors
Don Figer
Director of Center for Detectors
Education
BA, Northwestern University; MS, University of Chicago; Ph.D., University of California
Bio
Don Figer is Professor in the College of Science and Founder and Director of the Rochester Imaging Detector Laboratory, Center for Detectors, and the Future Photon Initiative at RIT. He previously was co-founder and Director of the Independent Detector Testing Laboratory at the Space Telescope Science Institute where he led a team to do the competitive characterization of prototype infrared detectors for the James Webb Space Telescope. He has been PI on dozens of observational astrophysics and instrumentation development programs. Dr. Figer studies massive stars, young star clusters, and the Galactic center. He identified the Pistol star as one of the most massive known. He made the first direct measurement of an upper limit to the masses of stars and has discovered more evolved massive stars and massive star clusters in the Galaxy than any other researcher. Dr. Figer has authored 300 publications with over 8,500 citations and has an h-index of 48.
Select Scholarship
Currently Teaching
In the News
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August 31, 2026
NASA is preparing to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Here's what to know
PBS News published an article by RIT's Don Figer, professor in the College of Science and director of the Center for Detectors, about NASA's newly launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Figer's column, which explains that images captured by the telescope will help researchers trace how the universe evolved over time, was originally published in The Conversation.
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July 1, 2026
Photon hunters: In search of habitable worlds
SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, featured research by Don Figer, professor in the College of Science and director of RIT's Center for Detectors, on next-generation photon detectors designed to help future space telescopes search for habitable exoplanets.
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December 14, 2022
RIT researchers receive NSF funding to further develop infrared detectors for astrophysics
The National Science Foundation will award Don Figer, director of RIT’s Center for Detectors and the Future Photon Initiative, more than $315,000 over the next year to continue work on a grant to provide the astronomy community with a new family of detectors that have very large formats, very low cost, and state-of-the-art performance.