Fellowships

Hsin-Yu is currently a NASA Einstein-MKI Fellow. Before coming to MIT in September 2020, she was a Black Hole Initiative Fellow at Harvard University. Hsin-Yu received her PhD from the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago. Hsin-Yu’s research interest is in gravitational-wave astrophysics and cosmology. She’s a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the LISA Consortium. With Advanced LIGO-Virgo’s gravitational-wave detection of compact binary mergers, she is trying to answer the question of how old the Universe is—one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. In addition, Hsin-Yu is helping to capture electromagnetic signals from the LIGO-Virgo’s binary mergers, so that the joint detections can shed light on the origin of the heavy elements in the Universe. Finally, the mergers of neutron stars observed by LIGO-Virgo will teach us how matter behaves at low-temperature and high-density environments—another question Hsin-Yu is trying to study.

Juan studied Electrical Engineering at Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia) before moving to Canada to study Honors Mathematics and Physics at McGill University. He obtained his PhD in Physics from McGill University in 2018.  Juan is an observational cosmologist who designs and builds novel instrumentation to improve the understanding of the origin, composition and evolution of the Universe. Juan is part of the team that designed, commissioned, and now operates the digital correlator for the CHIME telescope (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment). In Fall 2022, Dr. Mena-Parra joined the faculty at the University of Toronto as an assistant professor in the Dunlap Institute and the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Dr. Tansu Daylan is currently an associate research scholar and an LSSTC Catalyst Fellow in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. He works on the discovery, characterization, and demographics of exoplanets as a probe of planet formation and evolution as well as on searching for astrophysical signatures of dark matter and its structure at sub-galactic scales. His research involves development of fast, accurate, and scalable astro statistical methods including convolutional autoencoders and Bayesian inference via trans dimensional sampling also known as probabilistic cataloging.

In Fall 2023, Dr. Tansu Daylan joined the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis as an assistant professor of physics. He holds a double major in electrical and electronics engineering and physics from METU, Turkey, and as an undergraduate, worked on cosmic ray detection as a member of the AMS-02 collaboration at CERN. He received his PhD in physics from Harvard University in 2018, where he characterized the gamma-ray emission from the inner Milky Way to show its consistency with the products expected from the self-annihilation of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs).

Following his PhD, he became a Kavli Fellow at MIT Kavli Institute and has since worked on various aspects of the TESS Mission including the extraction of light curves from the full-frame images, the TESS Objects of Interest process, the spectroscopic follow-up of detected exoplanet candidates, and characterization of exo-atmospheres. He became a TESS Postdoctoral Associate in 2021. His work on TESS enabled the discovery of more than five thousand planet candidates and some of the prime discoveries of the TESS Mission such as the TOI-1233 multiplanetary system with an exceptionally bright host star. During his postdoc at MIT, he also served as the Human Affairs Chair (2019-2020) and the President (2020-2021) of the MIT Postdoctoral Association.

Denis obtained his M.S. from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in mathematical physics. His first research projects included simulations of gas flows in micro-scale devices.  Denis received his PhD in instrumental science at the California Institute of Technology in the LIGO laboratory in 2015.  Denis is currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham UK where he works on the design of the future gravitational-wave instruments.

Kevin was the inaugural MIT-Kavli Postdoctoral Fellow.  Kevin is a theoretically-oriented observational astronomer working at the intersection of Galactic astronomy and exoplanets.  He received his PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics from University of California, Santa Cruz in 2011. Before coming to MKI in August 2012, Kevin spent a year as a Senior Data Scientist at LinkedIn Corporation. Following his three years at MKI, Kevin was a Carnegie-Princeton Fellow, Carnegie Observatories and Princeton University, from 2015-2016. Kevin is currently Assistant Professor, Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University.

Kevin Burdge’s interests lie in discovering and characterizing astrophysical sources of both gravitational and electromagnetic radiation, especially those detectable by the upcoming space-based gravitational wave detector, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). These sources are Galactic binary systems with orbital periods of less than an hour, and consist of two compact objects–generally a white dwarf with either a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole companion. LISA is expected to detect tens of thousands of such binaries within the Milky Way, and Burdge’s work focuses on leveraging data from current and upcoming wide-field optical surveys such as the Zwicky Transient Facility, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and the Vera Rubin Observatory to discover and precisely constrain the physical parameters of these objects using the photons they emit. So far, Burdge has doubled the number of known examples of LISA-detectable binaries in the span of two years using the Zwicky Transient Facility, including the two shortest orbital period eclipsing binary systems known, and he has measured general relativistic orbital decay in several of these systems.Short period binaries hosting two compact objects can be used to perform novel tests of General Relativity, precisely constrain the equation of state of objects such as white dwarfs, and study the processes of binary evolution which produce these systems. Many of these binaries are double white dwarf pairs predicted to produce a Type Ia supernova upon merger, a type of explosion which allowed for the measurement of the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Juliana García-Mejía is broadly interested in developing novel astronomical instrumentation to enable the study of exoplanets, their atmospheres, and their low mass stellar hosts. She is the PI of The Tierras Observatory, a new 1.3-m ultra-precise fully-automated photometer located atop Mt. Hopkins, Arizona. Having spent her entire Ph.D. building Tierras, she is currently focused on using the facility to uncover temperate terrestrial planets, search for Moons around exoplanets, and study their low mass stellar hosts. Juliana is also pursuing the design of a high throughput, extremely-high resolution pathfinder spectrograph to enable narrow-wavelength atmospheric structure and velocity dynamic studies of exoplanets, and to expand cosmo chronological and magnetic field studies of stars of varied spectral types. In the future, this instrument could enable the detection of molecular oxygen in a terrestrial exoplanet atmosphere.

Michelle specializes in exoplanet detection, characterization, and demographics. She is particularly interested in improving automated vetting pipelines for distinguishing planets from false positives, as well as developing new statistical frameworks to estimate exoplanet occurrence rates and constrain planet formation and evolution theory. For her PhD, she developed an independent pipeline to search archival Kepler data for new exoplanets, and estimated occurrence rates including the abundance of potentially habitable planets around Sun-like stars. She came to MIT as a postdoctoral associate working on the TESS mission, where she led MIT’s Quick-Look Pipeline team and discovered thousands of new planet candidates. She also established the TESS Faint Star Search, which has independently found thousands more planet candidates including many of the only giant planets orbiting M dwarfs confirmed so far. Beyond planet detection, her TESS postdoctoral work involved the confirmation and characterization of multiple planetary systems including TOI-4010 and TOI-4599, predictions for the future TESS exoplanet yield, and improved estimates of hot Jupiter occurrence rates around diverse stellar populations.​ Starting in 2024, Michelle will be an Assistant Professor in the Physics and Astronomy department at the University of British Columbia.

At Cambridge, Max worked with Nobel-Laureate Professor Didier Queloz, where his research focused on distinguishing between real exoplanets and things that look like exoplanets, but are not (false positives). As part of the NGTS team, Max helped install telescopes, developed novel algorithms and hunted for Jupiter- and Neptune-sized exoplanets. During his Master’s, Max worked on a research project in the biophysics lab of Professor George Shubeita where he developed a mathematical model to understand Drosophila models of genetic diseases like Alzheimer’s and Fragile X. As a Juan Carlos Torres Fellow at MIT he continued his quest to find Earth-sized exoplanets around small stars and the big question of how stellar flares impact their habitability, working with leading international missions, such as TESS, SPECULOOS, ASTEP and NGTS. In September 2021, Max joined the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) as a European Space Agency (ESA) Research Fellow in the Netherlands. He is now the ESA Exoplanet Project Scientist of the CHEOPS mission.

Before coming to MIT as a Torres Fellow Xu specialized in wide-field photometry and planet detection with ground and space-based data, focusing on studying the population statistics of the planets she discovered, to understand the formation and coevolution of planetary systems with a diverse composition. Chelsea was also the Dunlap/CPS fellow at the University of Toronto in 2016. She has a broad range of research interests, and has developed many tools to achieve state-of-the-art photometry precision and detection of transiting planets from ground- (HATNet) and space- (Kepler/K2) based transit survey data. Chelsea has developed software to characterize gravity-darkening and oblateness signals in the Kepler light curves, and was a key contributor to revise the age of Hyades using stellar Isochron taken into account rotational effect. She is particularly interested in the relation between giant planets and small planets. She identified Warm Jupiter as a unique population of giant planets that coexist with super Earth companions. Leading the Full Frame Image data analysis of TESS at MIT, Chelsea was a core member of the Science Office team contributing to the TESS mission’s full frame image photometry, planet detection and data validation pipeline, where she discovered more than 2,000 planetary candidates.  She was also a Dunlap and CPS fellow at the University of Toronto in 2016. Xu is now an ARC DECRA fellow and a Lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland.

Jennifer works on the detection and characterization of low mass exoplanets using ground-based precision radial velocity (PRV) facilities. During her PhD at UC Santa Cruz she helped commission and automate the Automated Planet Finder (APF) telescope – a 2.4m PRV facility located in the hills above San Jose. Once the telescope was operational, she led some of the APF’s first science results — including the detection of a new planet orbiting the nearby M dwarf GJ 687. She came to MIT on a postdoctoral assignment as a PRV follow-up specialist for the small planets discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Using the Planet Finder Spectrograph on the Magellan Clay telescope in Chile, Jennifer confirmed the existence of planets such as TOI-824 b and TOI-1231 b and measured their masses and bulk densities. As a JPL postdoc she helped lead the Extreme Precision RV working group, and expanded her PRV work to include additional, redder, RV spectrographs such as the Palomar RV Instrument (PARVI). And now as a JPL scientist at CalTech she’s working with the Exoplanet Exploration Program Office to support the development of Extreme Precision RV science capabilities in the 2020s as we work towards detecting Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars.

After graduating from Harvard, Sarah moved to the University of Washington as a NASA Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow. Sarah was also a L’Oreal For Women in Science Fellow in 2015. Her research interests include the detection and study of extrasolar planets with near-infrared and optical photometry, formation of planets, characterization of exoplanetary host stars, and photometric techniques. While at MIT, Sarah was a collaborator with TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), an MIT-led NASA mission, and continues as a TSO vetter for MIT TESS. Sarah is currently assistant professor of Astronomy at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Zach observes exoplanets – planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. He focuses on exoplanets intermediate in size between the Earth and Neptune to understand the composition, evolution, and origins of these strange planets that do not exist in our own solar system. Zach uses small telescopes to discover transiting exoplanets and large telescopes to study their atmospheres. His work makes practical advances toward the long-term goal of searching for life around other stars. While at MIT, Zach was a collaborator with TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), an MIT-led NASA mission and a core member of the MIT TESS science team. Zach is currently a professor of physics in the Department of Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Rohan Naidu is broadly interested in the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. His research addresses when these galaxies emerged to illuminate the universe, how they ionized the intergalactic reservoirs of hydrogen, and how they synthesized the elements that would one day seed life on Earth. Rohan pursues these galaxies with a near-and-far approach. As one of the first users of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, he is leading direct studies of galaxies at the highest redshifts. And through archaeological studies of our own galaxy, aided by ESA’s Gaia satellite, he has excavated some of the most ancient systems that lie buried within the Milky Way.

Riccardo Arcodia’s research focuses on studying transient and persistent accretion events onto black holes of different masses, from X-ray and optically bright active supermassive black holes to massive black holes in low-mass galaxies, down to stellar-mass black holes. He significantly contributed to the discovery and study of a new rare outlier in the family of extragalactic X-ray transients, the so-called quasi-periodic eruptions, using the eROSITA X-ray telescope and several other facilities. He is now at the forefront of the efforts to study their X-ray and multi-wavelength properties, in an attempt to unveil more about their origin.

Kishalay De’s research interests lie in the transient optical/infrared sky to search for cataclysmic explosions in the Milky Way and in distant galaxies. He obtained his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 2021, where he worked on building the largest volume-limited sample of supernovae using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) survey to search for faint thermonuclear and core-collapse supernovae. His work led to the identification of new classes of explosions arising from helium shell detonations on white dwarfs and the deaths of extremely stripped massive stars. De helped build the first wide-field infrared time domain survey, Gattini-IR at Palomar Observatory, that surveys three quarters of the sky every two nights. By looking in the near-infrared, De’s work revealed a population of dust obscured eruptions (novae, X-ray binaries, microlensing events and young stars) that are missed in optical surveys. De is currently working on systematic searches for neutron stars and black holes in the Milky Way via variable and erupting optical/infrared counterparts of Galactic X-ray sources, using time domain surveys like ZTF, Gattini-IR, WINTER and in the future, with the Vera Rubin observatory and the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.

Elisabeth received her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics from Harvard University in 2016 with her thesis “The Evolution of Rotation and Magnetism in Small Stars Near the Sun”. She earned her B.S. in Physics from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2009. Her research focuses on the physics of nearby, low mass stars (red dwarfs, or M dwarfs), and the planets that orbit them. Elisabeth uses observations to investigate their fundamental stellar properties, angular momentum evolution, and magnetic field generation. Elisabeth is enthusiastic about mentoring and outreach. She helped found Astrobites, a blog that communicates current research in astronomy to an undergraduate audience, and ComSciCon, a national workshop on science communication for graduate students. As part of her NSF Fellowship, Elizabeth taught an introductory astronomy course in Massachusetts state prisons through the Boston University Prison Education Program.

Kathy received her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the University of California,  Santa Cruz in 2009 with her thesis “Probing the Chemical Composition of the z <1 Intergalactic Medium with Observations and Simulations. Her advisor was Professor J. Xavier Prochaska. She earned her M.S. in Astronomy & Astrophysics from University of California, Santa Cruz in 2005, and her B.S. in Physics from Valparaiso University in 2003.