Research

Keystone Exoplanet Systems:

Most of my research is centered on discovering and characterizing keystone exoplanet systems that can answer specific questions on how planets form and evolve. Observations for this work come from various projects that I am involved in like the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) Survey, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, Kepler/K2, and the MEarth survey.

Here are some of the exoplanet systems I have helped discover:

Five new hot and warm Jupiters discovered from the TESS FFIS
KELT-14b and KELT-15b: Two hot Jupiters well-suited for eclipse measurements
HD 106315: Two small planets orbiting a bright F-star that are accessible for spin-orbit alignment measurements
GJ 9827: A system of three super Earths that span the rock to gas transition
K2-266: A compact 6 planet system with a USP that is "way out of line!"
TOI-172 b: A massive eccentric hot Jupiter and the first planet discovered in the TESS FFIs
KELT-24b: A massive hot Jupiter orbiting a bright (V=8.3) F-star
TOI-700: A multiplanet system with the first habitable zone Earth-sized planet from TESS confirmed by Spitzer
KELT-9b: A Hot Jupiter with the temperature of a mid-K star (4500K) on a 1.5 day orbit around an A0 star. The hottest exoplanet discovered to date (and made the cover of Nature!):

Disk Eclipse Search with KELT (DESK) Survey:

Young stellar objects are typically surrounded by protoplanetary circumstellar disks. One way to probe the size, mass, and composition of these disks is to observe a star being eclipsed by its own disk. So far only a few of these events have been discovered and analyzed in the literature, and each system allows the opportunity to study different stages of planetary formation. New wide-field time domain surveys are an ideal tool to search for rare eclipse events, depending on the coverage, cadence, and baseline of the survey. Using time-series photometry from the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) exoplanet survey (combined with other surveys like the AAVSO, SuperWASP, ASAS-SN), we are looking for disk eclipsing events, specifically in young stellar associations. We are planning to study these types of phenomena with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which is expected to find hundreds of these disk eclipsing systems. To date, we have already discovered and/or studied the following previously unknown disk eclipsing systems:

And dippers have been studied from:

Video of the TOI-700 system

interview with Event Horizon on TOI-700

MSU Observatory Research Program

Here at MSU we are running a large observing program to contribute cutting-edge observations to ongoing discoveries from NASA missions. This effort provides ~2 dozen undergraduate astronomy majors opportunities to conduct research

Discovery of 6 New Hot Jupiters from TESS

This ~2-minute video reviews our recent discovery of 6 new hot Jupiters from NASA's TESS mission and how we are using the population of these rare systems to understand their evolutionary origin.

"RafaelAstronomy" An interview on TOI-700 with Rafael, a 10 year old from PR who loves astronomy. Check it out and follow him!

AAS 235 Press conference on TESS. I was given an opportunity to present the Spitzer confirmation of TOI-700 d.

Article about my career from Tapinto Union: https://www.tapinto.net/towns/union/articles/union-high-school-grad-helps-nasa-discover-new-earth-like-planet

Press on TOI-700: The first habitable zone Earth-size planet from TESS: