Research

Planets are the stage life plays out on. If we want to find out where we come from, how we got here, or whether we are unique in the universe, we must understand how worlds are made and shaped. This is my research. To help discover our origins and guide our search for life, I study how planets form.

Over the past thirty years, this field has exploded from a sample size of just eight --- the planets of the Solar System --- to learn from thousands of newly-discovered worlds around other stars. Yet we still struggle to understand how planets are born and what it takes for a world to bloom like our own. In part, this is because only a handful of planets discovered so far have been newly born, and so young enough to provide a direct window into their formation.

The goal of my research is to find more. I have spent my PhD developing new multi-wavelength tools to identify very young planets and am now applying them to several promising candidates. Confirming just one of these systems would shape our understanding of how planets form. This work has earned me the Kevin E. Strecker Award for my department’s most outstanding Master’s thesis and the William and Elva Gordon Fellowship award for research achievement; at the same time, one of my tools, which I made publicly available, has already been used by another research group to characterize a newfound young planet.