Student Projects

My research touches upon many aspects of exoplanet science, including exoplanet observations with JWST and theoretical work. I regularly recruit undergraduate students for research projects on exoplanet atmospheres. Over the past few years, I have supervised several undergraduate students - leading to research papers published in peer-reviewed journals.

 

Available Student Projects

No projects are currently available (pending my move to St Andrews!)

Past Student Projects

Hot Jupiters to Water Worlds: Giant Exoplanet Atmospheres with JWST

(2 Projects)

As JWST entered its 2nd year of science operations (Cycle 2), these two projects saw two University of Michigan astrophysics major undergraduates join our efforts to interpret JWST spectra of giant exoplanet atmospheres. The two projects were:

  1. The Multidimensional Atmosphere of a Hot Jupiter. We recently observed the hot Jupiter WASP-52b with JWST as part of a Cycle 2 Program aiming to measure differences between the east and west sides of the planet. The student joined our team’s efforts to measure the chemical composition, temperature, and cloud properties on each side of the planet. Multiple papers resulted from this project.

  2. What are the Water Worlds? A major open question in exoplanet science is the unknown atmospheric properties of the class of exoplanets with intermediate size between Earth and Neptune. Recently, several planets have been discovered with densities suggesting they contain substantial amounts of water. But the nature of the atmospheres of these ‘water worlds’ is currently unknown. We observed 5 of these mysterious planets with JWST through a Large Cycle 2 Program to measure their atmospheric composition. The student joined our team’s efforts to measure the atmospheric properties of candidate water worlds, resulting in multiple published papers.

The two students learnt how to use a state-of-the-art Bayesian inference code to extract atmospheric properties from an exoplanet spectrum and applied these techniques to JWST observations of exoplanets. They also joined and contributed to meetings of international JWST teams during the analysis efforts and presented their results at multiple astronomy conferences.

Searching for an Atmosphere on the Super-Earth GJ 1132b with JWST

I worked with a UMich student throughout 2023 to interpret two JWST transit observations of the warm rocky exoplanet GJ 1132b (T ~ 600 K). After the observations were successful in February 2023, our goal was to determine if the planet has an atmosphere and, if so, to measure its atmospheric composition.

The student joined an international team working on the analysis of GJ 1132b’s JWST observations, wrote and ran code to fit the planet’s spectrum, and co-authored an accepted scientific paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The student also travelled to an exoplanet conference at Yale to present their results.