Paul Draghis

Paul obtained his PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2024 from the University of Michigan. Before that, he obtained a Bachelor’s degree with Honors in Physics, with a minor in Mathematics and a concentration in Astrophysics from Stanford University. Paul’s research concentrates on understanding the properties of stellar-mass black holes, with a particular focus on characterizing the rotation of the black holes in X-ray binary systems in our galaxy. Using X-ray space telescopes such as NuSTAR, NICER, Swift, Chandra, XMM-Newton, or XRISM, Paul observes the emission from the innermost regions of the accretion disks formed around black holes by matter leaving the surface of a stellar companion in a binary orbit with the black hole. By modeling the distortion of spectral features caused by the gravitational influence of the black hole, he is able to characterize the properties of the black hole, such as its spin, and the specifics of the physical processes at play in the accretion disk. This work has important implications in the formation and evolution of black holes, massive star evolution, the physics of supernovae and binary systems, the physics of accretion, and it connects to gravitational wave observations of merging binary black holes. Furthermore, Paul is interested in accretion onto compact objects at all scales of the mass spectrum, ranging from white dwarves and neutron stars to the supermassive black holes found in the centers of active galactic nuclei (AGN), and tidal disruption events (TDEs).