Exoplanets Alumni
Samantha Andrade (2019)
Sam is from Tucson, Arizona and is a cycling, swimming, and ice cream enthusiast.
Sophia Sanchez-Maes (2019)

A native New Mexican, Sophia also enjoys mathematics, reading, hiking, and travel.
Dominic Eggerman (2018)

Pratik Gandhi (2018)

Michael Mossman (2018)

Scott Smith (2018)

Kristoffer Acuna (2017)

Kristo Ment (2017)

Justin Myles (2017)

Mariona Badenas (2016)

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 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 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)

Aida Behmard (2015)

Ari Brill (2015)

He enjoys reading, especially science fiction, and served as co-President of the Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association.
Charles Margossian (2015)

Charles will begin the PhD program in statistics at Columbia (Fall 2017).
Ted Papalexopoulos (2015)

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 in Fall 2017.
Cory Combs (2014)

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)

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.
Farris Gillman (2013)

Zachary Kaplan (2013)

Zak graduated from Yale 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 a manager at the Novantas financial services firm in NYC.
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!
Ilya Uts (2013)

Ilya was a physics and astronomy major at Yale. For his senior thesis project, he wrote code to interpolate
the equation of state of the various phases of water up to 1 Tpa and 24000K.
This work is important for models of exoplanet interiors.
Ilya worked with Dr. Nikku Madhusudhan and Prof Debra Fischer.
Ilya is now working at J.P. Morgan in NYC.
Will Rutter (Summer 2013)

Will enjoys singing, the outdoors and is a certified private pilot.
Charles Sharzer (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.
Joseph O'Rourke (2012)

Graduating in 2012, Joe went on
to complete his Ph.D. in Planetary Science at Caltech, where he is now a postdoctoral fellow.
A.J. Riggs (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 is now a sales engineer at Looker and living the good life in NYC.