Exoplanets Alumni
Pratik Gandhi (2018)
Pratik is an Astrophysics major, class of 2018. He worked on research with
postdoctoral fellow Tabby Boyajian, working on characterising the properties of
eclipsing binary stars during the summer of 2015. Outside of academics,
Pratik is Director of Public Relations
for the Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association, works with the Sustainability
Service Corps, and is on the Yale Ballroom Dance Team.
Michael Mossman (2018)
Michael is an undergrad at Yale, class of 2018. He is studying Mathematics and Physics and is working
on a Fabry-Perot based wavelength calibrator. In his free time, Michael enjoys
playing ice hockey and rock climbing.
Mariona Badenas (2016)
Mariona is from Barcelona, Spain. She was a member of Branford College and graduated
with a B.S. in Astrophysics.
Mariona worked with Prof. Fischer on the detection and characterization of
planet candidates from the
Kepler-2 archive data and wrote a spectacular senior thesis. On graduation,
she was awarded the George Beckwith Prize.
The prize is awarded to the undergraduates most proficient in some branch of
astronomy or mathematics.
Mariona was the Co-President of the Society of Physics Students, the
Outreach Chair for Women in Physics at Yale,
and a tutor and grader in the Spanish Department.
In her free time, she enjoys cooking, flying, and dreaming that one day she will go to space.
Mariona attended the 2016 Space Studies Program at the Technion, in Haifa Israel. She is now working on the ALTAIR project at at a space company in Barcelona.
Thomas Foster (2016)
Thomas was an Astrophysics major at Yale, class of 2016. His first astronomy class as a freshman was "Life in the Universe" with Professor Fischer.
For his senior thesis research project, he worked on an instrumentation project
in the Yale exoplanet lab with Tyler McCracken, setting up an experiment to track dispersion
in the tunable Fabry Perot optical frequency comb.
Thomas was offered spots in the graduate programs at Oxford and Cambridge where he
is excited to continue rowing light crew. How excited?
Check out this picture - the light crew team won by a foot!
Brooke Lamell (2016)
Brooke was an Astrophysics major at Yale, class of 2016. For her research,
she worked with postdoctoral fellow Tabby Boyajian analyzing angular diameters of stars in 2014. For her
senior thesis project, she carried out an analysis of the dynamical stability of
the 5-planet system, Kepler-102.
Brooke is also an amazing opera singer! After graduation, she is going on to the American University in Washington D.C. where she will apply her exuberance to learning how to manage theatre and opera shows.
Diego Torres Quintanilla (2016)
Diego was an undergraduate at Yale (class of 2016), majoring in both Computer
Science and Applied Mathematics. He worked on his senior thesis project with
Prof. Fischer, pioneering extraction of the
laser frequency comb (LFC) from simulated data and calculating the precision of the LFC.
Diego also headed up the Yale Mexican Student Organization and enjoys world literature.
Aida Behmard (2015)
Aida graduates with a BS in physics from Yale, class of 2015. For her senior
thesis project, she explored the effects of stellar spots and other aberrations
on radial velocity data. In her free time she likes to cook, read, and hang out with her cat!
Ari Brill (2015)
Ari was a physics major at Yale, class of 2015. For his senior thesis project, he searched
through the Kepler Mission data for inverse transits caused by microlensing events and
found some interesting candidates! He went on to grad school (physics) at Columbia University.He enjoys reading, especially science fiction, and served as co-President of the Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association.
Charles Margossian (2015)
Charles graduated with a physics degree from Yale, class of 2015. He worked with
Kepler data to understand the evolution of gas giant planet radii as a function
of time and to search for signs of stellar activity, correlated with close-in giant planets.
Charles was also in plays on campus and took his tremendous energy and charisma
on to a job in Boston after graduating.
Charles will begin the PhD program in statistics at Columbia (Fall 2017).
Ted Papalexopoulos (2015)
Ted studied Statistics and Physics at Yale. He worked
on template deconvolution and a new C++ version of the Doppler code for CHIRON.
For his senior thesis project, he analyzed spectra of alpha Cen A and B - because of contamination
from the companion star, he developed a technique for fitting contamination with a scaled spectrum.
In his free time, he likes to play water polo, read Calvin and Hobbes and cook Greek food.
After graduating, Ted moved to Boston where he worked for two years as a consultant with Analytics Operation Engineering (acquired by McKinsey & Company). He is starting a PhD program at the MIT Operations Research Center.
Cory Combs (2014)
Cory graduated in 2014 with a B.S. degree in Physics and Philosophy at Yale.
He went on to teach English as a second language in Southern China and postdoc Ji Wang reports
that he mastered the Chinese language! This picture was taken after the Yale Summer Session Astronomy program in Chile, as he trekked through Chile and Peru to Machu Picchu.
Cory will start at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Masters program and has been offered fellowships from the school and from the China Studies department.
Alyssa Picard (2014)
Alyssa was in the class of 2014 majoring in Physics.
She was awarded a STARS II Fellowship to work on the analysis of NASA Kepler
data in collaboration with the Planet Hunters project. For her senior thesis project,
she modeled Kepler heartbeat stars and modeling transit light curves with just
one or two transit events and Alyssa was a co-author on "Planet Hunters. VIII. Characterization
of 41 Long-period exoplanet candiates from Kepler archival data," 2015, ApJ 815, 127 After finishing a 1 year physics program at Cambridge University, Alyssa was awarded a 2-year Science and Technology Policy Fellowship in D.C. during the summer of 2015. She is entering Law school at Stanford University in the Fall 2017 and is excited about the intersection of science and the law.
Zachary Kaplan (2013)
Zak graduated class of 2013 with a B.A. in Astronomy.
While at Yale, Zak set up a
fiber optics lab for the Exoplanets research group and helped to develop
a prototype instrument for Keck / HIRES. He was co-author on a book chapter and three refereed papers
and his poster at the AAS meeting in summer 2012 was awarded the Chambliss Prize for
undergraduate research and
upon graduating, Zak was awarded the George Beckwith Prize for his proficiency in astrophysics.
Zak is now working in NYC in big finance.
We hope he's headed for politics one day - he's got my vote.
Congratulations to Zak and Caitleen on their wedding - June 20, 2015!
Will Rutter (Summer 2013)
Will began as a physics / aerospace major at MIT class of 2016, and we were lucky to have him
working in the Yale exoplanet lab during the summer of 2013. He developed a Doppler Free Laser
using saturated absorption spectroscopy that laid the foundation for an etalon wavelength
calibrator that will be used to detect Earthlike planets around other stars.
We hear he is now a pre-med major!
Will enjoys singing, the outdoors and is a certified private pilot.
Charles Sharzer (2012)
Charlie is from Southern California and obtained his B.S. in Astronomy and Physics (a
long with a double major in Music),
in the class of 2012.
He went on to Teach For America and spent a year inspiring high school students
in New Jersey to study physics!
Now he is working for an amazing company, Palantir in NYC.
Charlie is getting married summer 2016!
Joseph O'Rourke (2012)
Joe had a double major in Geology & Geophysics and Astronomy & Physics.
If it sounds like he completed four majors... he nearly did!
In Fall 2011, Joe gave a TEDx Yale talk
on Life In Our Solar System.
Graduating in 2012, Joe went on
to grad school in Planetary Science at Caltech.
A.J. Riggs (2011)
A.J. studied physics and mechanical engineering at Yale, in the class of 2011.
He collaborated with Andrew Szymkowiak, Christian Schwab, and Julien Spronck on a sol-gel coating facility, a calibration system for the Yale Doppler Diagnostic Facility, and an atmospheric turbulence simulator.
A.J. finished his PhD in mechanical engineering at Princeton (2016) and is now working at the
Jet Propulsion Labs!
Nicolaas Van Nispen (2011)
Nick graduated from Yale in the class of 2011 with a degree in astrophysics. Nick worked in the Yale Exoplanets group with Julien Spronck and Christian Schwab on development
of the CHIRON spectrometer, and helped design and build the fiber optic light feed and the exposure
meter for the CHIRON spectrometer. His senior thesis work involved a search for exoplanets in Doppler data of Mdwarf stars.
Nick is now working in finance and living the good life in NYC.
