Dániel Apai, PhD
Interim Associate Dean for Science
Professor, Astronomy and Planetary Sciences

Daniel’s research projects include exoplanet and brown dwarf atmospheres, astrobiology, planet formation, and the search for habitable exoplanets. He is using ground- and space-based telescopes to study planet formation, search for new worlds, and characterize them. His work also includes connecting the stages of planet formation in the Solar System to those observed in protoplanetary disks around other stars.

Daniel is leading the Extrasolar Storms, the Alien Earths, and the Cloud Atlas, Project EDEN, Project Nautilus programs.

Kevin Hardegree-Ullman, PhD
Alien Earths Postdoctoral Researcher

Kevin received his PhD from the University of Toledo in 2018 for his work in constraining planet occurrence rates for mid-type M dwarfs in the Kepler field. His research in exoplanet demographics continued at Caltech/IPAC-NExScI through 2021, where he identified the planet radius valley in K2 data, confirming that the key result from the Kepler mission holds up throughout different regions of the galaxy. In addition to exoplanet demographics, Kevin’s research includes stellar characterization, ground and space-based follow-up of transiting exoplanets, and brown dwarf photometric variability. He is currently working on Project EDEN and Bioverse to help study the nearby exoplanet population.

Visit Kevin’s website at: https://kevinkhu.com

Jeremy Dietrich
UArizona Astronomy Graduate Student
Project EDEN and Alien Earths

Jeremy is a 5th year PhD student working on exoplanet populations and statistical analyses. Specifically, he is examining multi-planet systems and searching for “hidden” planets, by using population statistics to determine the most likely systems to contain an additional planet that is currently undiscovered. Jeremy is also working on the Project EDEN survey of nearby M dwarfs for transiting planets, leading the target selection and data analysis.

Jeremy Dietrich

Rachael Amaro
NSF Graduate Research Fellow
UArizona Astronomy Graduate Student

Rachael is a 4th year graduate student studying the atmospheres of brown dwarfs in tight white dwarf-brown dwarf binaries. These highly irradiated ultracool atmospheres enable us to test the presence of predicted condensate cloud formation, study day-night heat redistribution in great detail, and build an observational link between field brown dwarf and hot jupiter studies.

Dat (Fuda) Nguyen
LPL Graduate Student

Fuda is interested in the physics and habitability of exoplanets and characterization of their atmosphere. He is currently working on brown dwarfs’ atmosphere variability through time-resolved light-curve observations. Previously he also worked on dust physics in exoplanet atmosphere and the ISM. As an astronomer from Vietnam, he is very interested in astronomy outreach to underrepresented communities in academia, internationally and domestically.
Website: https://fudanguyen.wordpress.com

Arin M. Avsar
LPL Graduate Student

Arin is a 1st year graduate student working on direct imaging of debris disks, which are the rocky and icy leftovers of planet formation. These Asteroid and Kuiper Belt analogs give us insight into how young planetary systems evolve over time, which is essential to understanding the early history of Earth and our Solar System. 

Megan Mansfield, PhD
Hubble/Sagan Fellow

Megan received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2021, where she performed spectroscopic observations and modeling of highly irradiated exoplanets, ranging in size from hot terrestrial planets to ultra-hot Jupiters. Megan’s research focuses on the spectroscopic characterization of exoplanet atmospheres. She uses a variety of ground-based and space-based observations to study planetary formation, physics, chemistry, and habitability.

Visit Megan’s website at: https://meganmansfield.github.io/

Kevin Wagner, PhD
NASA Hubble/Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Kevin Wagner is a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. Dr. Wagner’s research focuses on directly detecting and studying planets around nearby stars, with a specific focus on finding and characterizing potentially life supporting planets. His team’s recent work has enabled imaging planets that are approximately Neptune-sized in the habitable zones of the closest Sun-like stars, such as Alpha Centauri and Sirius, which shows that imaging smaller, potentially Earth-like planets is within reach of upcoming telescopes.

Visit Kevin’s website at: Kevin’s website

Martin Schlecker, PhD
Alien Earths Postdoctoral Researcher

Martin studies the formation of planetary systems with a focus on exoplanet demographics and planets around cool stars. His tools of choice are population synthesis models and statistical analyses of planet populations. He is also involved in programs that search for new exoplanets with the transit and radial velocity techniques. Martin received his PhD from the University of Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in 2021 for his work on the architectures of multi-planet systems. He joined the group in 2022.
Visit Martin’s website at https://matiscke.github.io

Ritvik Basant

Ritvik is a Junior majoring in Physics and Astronomy, with a minor in Mathematics. His research focuses on characterizing habitable exoplanets using statistical assessment based on planetary bond albedo and orbital period priors.

Zach Werber
Physics & Astronomy

Zach is a senior majoring in physics and astronomy, with a minor in mathematics. His research interest is in using high-contrast imaging to study exoplanet atmospheres, with a particular interest in applying this technique around nearby stars to search for and characterize potentially habitable planets.

Gabriel Weible
Physics & Astronomy

Gabe is an Honors junior majoring in Astronomy and Physics, with a minor in Mathematics. His research focuses on high-contrast direct imaging of exoplanets and brown dwarfs using ground-based telescopes. Some of his current work includes the characterization of a circumbinary brown dwarf in the Pleiades, including analysis of its orbit, spectrum, and possible formation scenarios.
Website: www.gabeweible.com

Doctoral Dissertations directed by Daniel Apai: