people | cool worlds

David Kipping

I seek to understand our home's uniqueness in the universe. Our parent star, solar system, home planet and companion moon have all played a role in the story of how we came to be. My passion is to follow the trail of cosmic breadcrumbs left behind to reveal whether this story played out elsewhere across the ocean of stars. I try to think of new ways to extract information out of astronomical data and ways in which we can actually realize these ideas.

dkipping at astro.columbia.edu

Ruth Angus

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I am a Simons postdoctoral fellow interested in the application of Bayesian techniques to infer various properties of stars. In particular, I work on methods to age stars using their rotation period, a technique known as gyrochronology. I hope to use this method to understand how planetary systems change in time, placing our Solar System in a chronological context. Codes from my publications are public and freely available on GitHub, just check out my repo here.

keywords: star spots, granulation, stellar ages, gaussian processes, photometry

rangus at astro.columbia.edu

Jingjing Chen

I am a graduate student currently developing ways to infer the internal compositions of exoplanets, particularly rocky worlds. I am also interested in applying statistical methods such as Hierarchical Bayesian Model (HBM) to astronomical data sets, such as those from Kepler and TESS. As a recent example of my work, I developed a model for forecasting the mass (or radius) of a planet based on the radius (or mass), with public code available here.

keywords: bayesian inference, hierarchical bayesian modeling, exoplanet compositions

jchen at astro.columbia.edu

Tiffany Jansen

I am a first-year graduate student in astronomy studying extrasolar planets in the Cool Worlds team. I'm particularly interested in looking for exotic phenomena, such as rings, moons and other subtle effects using a variety of methods.

jansent at astro.columbia.edu

Moiya McTier

I am a first-year graduate student here at Columbia broadly interested in galaxies and exoplanets. I am researching what could be possible with the next-generation of telescopes investigating exoplanets with some exciting prospects in the works. I also write science fiction and mythology novels in my spare time!

mmctier at astro.columbia.edu

Emily Sandford

I am a third-year graduate student in the astronomy department, working on calibrating the properties of Kepler planet host stars using transit data. My previous research has focused on the accretion history of the Milky Way, from understanding the Milky Way's satellite galaxy population in a broader cosmological context to analyzing the dynamics of tidal streams in the Milky Way halo.

keywords: tidal streams, bayesian inference, transit modeling, information theory

esandford at astro.columbia.edu

Alex Teachey

I'm a second year graduate student working on the search for moons orbiting extrasolar planets. As an undergraduate, I worked alongside astronomers at the American Museum of Natural History and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, where my research was focused on the study of giant molecular clouds in the Milky Way using radio, near-infrared and gamma-ray observations. I'm an alumnus of CUNY Hunter College and was recently selected as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow.

ateachey at astro.columbia.edu

Jorge Cortes

I'm a postbac student studying in the bridge program at Columbia. My main research interests are compact objects, late-stage stellar evolution and extrasolar planets. I am currently working on the detectability of exoplanets with the upcoming LSST survey, using methods such as injection/recovery tests to study completeness and sensitivity.

jorgecorte at astro.columbia.edu

Gabrielle Engelmann-Suissa

I'm a junior undergraduate student at Columbia University, interested in exoplanets, astronomy and life in the Universe. I'm working with Jingjing Chen to understand what constraints we can place on the interior structure of rocky exoplanets and will be working with the Cool Worlds Lab over the summer of 2017.

ge2205 at columbia.edu

Chris Lam

I am a senior undergraduate majoring in applied math and researching the trends and patterns seen in Kepler multi-planet systems. I'm interested in data science and machine learning applied to both astronomical data sets and beyond. I am in the fifth year of a dual-degree program in which I graduate with degrees from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and Columbia University's Fu Foundation

cl3425 at columbia.edu