About me
Greetings, and welcome to my homepage. I am an associate professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University.
My research explores how planetary systems form. I use computational simulations to investigate the physical processes that transform the dust and gas in young circumstellar disks into planetesimals, planets, and ultimately planetary systems. My work spans the dynamics of protoplanetary disks, the concentration and growth of solids through streaming instability and pebble accretion, and the formation of the diverse populations of planets and small bodies we observe today.
I have founded the PFITS+ collaboration, involving six institutions and nearly 20 members.
Research Interests
Planet formation, exoplanets, accretion disks, planet migration; fluid mechanics, magnetohydrodynamics, dust dynamics, radiative transfer. Icy shell convection, active galactic nuclei. Code development, supercomputing. You can read more about my research here
Latest news
- Sep 2026: Attending 1st UTEP-NMSU symposium on Star and Planet Formation.
- Sep 2026: First author chapter submmited to Meteorites and the Early Solar System III.
- Sep 2026: Live interview for SETI about the paper on planets around supermassive black holes.
- Aug 2026: Story on our recent paper about planet formation around supermassive black holes, led by Bhupendra Mishra.
- Aug 2026: Visiting Akimasa Kataoka and Takahiro Ueda at NAOJ (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan).
- Aug 2026: Visiting Kengo Tomida at Tohoku University.
- Aug 2026: Attending The formation of stars and planets in the evolving galaxy in Okinawa, Japan.
- Jul 2026: Visiting Keiichi Wada at University of Kagoshima.
- Jul 2026: Visiting Hiroyuki Kurokawa, Takeru Suzuki, and Ryo Tazaki at University of Tokyo.
- Jul 2026: Visiting Yuri Fujii at University of Kyoto.
- Jul 2026: Visiting Shu-ichiro Inutsuka at Nagoya University.
- Jun 2026: Co-hosting the 3rd PFITS+ Meeting on Hydrodynamics of Circumstellar Disks and Planet Formation at the SETI institute.
- May 2026: Paper accepted! Led by Bhupendra Mishra, on planet formation in AGN disks.
- May 2026: Attending MESS-III (Meteorites and the Early Solar System) conference, in Copenhagen.
- May 2026: Visiting Richard Nelson at Queen Mary University of London, UK.
- May 2026: Visiting James Owen at Imperial College of London, UK.
- May 2026: Visiting Farzana Meru at University of Warwick, UK.
- May 2026: Visiting Henrik Latter at University of Cambridge, UK.
- Apr 2026: StarPlan Retreat at Ystad, Sweden.
- Apr 2026: PhD student graduated! Congratulations Dr Cook!
- Apr 2026: Visiting Sijme-Jan Paardekooper at TU Delft.
- Mar 2026: Student paper accepted, on AGN as supernovae mufflers. First author Harry Cook.
- Mar 2026: Attending SPiCE2 conference (Simulating Physics in Celestial Environments) in Lyon, France.
- Mar 2026: Paper submitted, on the streaming instability code comparison, finally in the arXiv! [Sep 28 update: accepted]
- Feb 2026: Attending the Flatiron workshop on hydrodynamic and dusty turbulence in protoplanetary disks, at the Center for Computational Astrophysics in NYC.
- Feb 2026: Attending conference From Galaxies to Planets: an elemental journey, Ringberg Castle, Germany.
- Feb 2026: Attending Workshop on Planets Around M-Dwarfs, Lund, Sweden.
- Jan 2026: Presenting at New Horizons 59th Open Science Team Meeting.
- Dec 2025: Paper submitted! Led by Anders Johansen, on connecting streaming instability and pebble accretion. [April 26 update: accepted]
- Dec 2025: Paper submitted! Led by graduate student Harrison Cook, on transients in AGN disks. [March 26 update: accepted.]
Acknowledgments
My group`s research is currently funded by NSF via grant AST-2511672; by the New Mexico Space Grant consortium via grant 80NSSC25M7069; by the NASA Emerging Worlds Program via grants 80NSSC24K1447, 80NSSC25K7414; and the NASA Exoplanet Research Program via grant 80NSSC24K0959. My supercomputer needs are supported by the NMSU Discovery cluster, NASA Pleiades supercluster, and XSEDE/TACC Stampede3 through allocation TG-AST140014.
Former groups
I received my Ph.D. in February 2009 from Uppsala University, Sweden. Before joining the faculty at NMSU, I did postdocs at NASA-JPL/Caltech, as a Sagan fellow (class of 2011, currently the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program - NHFP), and at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City. I was also a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), in Heidelberg, Germany.