Ilaria Pascucci, Professor, Department of Planetary Sciences and Astronomy.
I am interested in understanding the origin and diversity of planetary systems. I am leading multiple studies to characterize protoplanetary disks, how they evolve and disperse, and which of their properties mostly impact the planets that form within. To this end I have used a number of techniques (spectroscopy, spectroastromery, imaging) and observations at multiple wavelengths.
Naman Bajaj, Graduate student. Naman is studying how planet-forming disks evolve and disperse. He is using MIRI and NIRSpec JWST IFU imaging and spectroscopy to identify and characterize disk winds around young stars.
Galen Bergsten, Graduate student. Galen is interested in understanding which nearby planetary systems host an exo-Earth. He is using the known trends between stellar properties and exoplanets in the Kepler field to evaluate which nearby stars are most likely to host an exo-Earth. Visit Galen’s website for more info.
Dingshan Deng, Graduate student. Dingshan is studying the birth sites of planets, particularly using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. He is currently focusing on developing an approach to accurately estimate gas disk masses.
Genevieve Kuo, Graduate student. Genevieve is studying the chemistry of disks around very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs using infrared spectroscopy with the James Webb Space Telescope.
Feng Long, Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow. Feng’s research focuses on the formation and evolution of protoplanetary disks. She is an expert in mm/cm interferometric observations (e.g., ALMA, SMA, and VLA). See Feng’s website for more information about her current research and main results.
Chengyan Xie, Graduate student. Chengyan’s research focuses on connecting the properties of circumstellar disks to forming planets. He is currently analyzing the infrared variability of a disk with a large cavity likely carved by one or more planets.
Former postdocs and graduate students:
University of Arizona/LPL:
- Rachel Fernandes, graduate student, now President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn State
- Kamber Schwarz, NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow, now at the MPIA
- Nathan Hendler, graduate student, now postdoc at UofA
- Andrea Banzatti, postdoc, now faculty at Texas State
- Min Fang, postdoc, now faculty at the Purple Mountain Observatory
- Gijs Mulders, postdoc, now faculty at the University of Adolfo Ibáñez
- Molly Simon, graduate student, now Assistant Professor at ASU
- Elisabetta Rigliaco, postdoc, now a Marie Curie Fellow at the Observatory of Padova
- James Keane, graduate, now Postdoctoral fellow at Caltech
Space Telescope & Johns Hopkins University:
- Davide Fedele, postdoc, now Research Staff at the Arcetri Observatory in Italy
- Veronica Roccatagliata, postdoc, now a Marie Curie Fellow at the Arcetri Observatory, Florence
- Basmah Riaz, postdoc, now at the University of Munich