Postdoctoral Scholars

Zahra Essack

Zahra is a postdoctoral researcher working on the detection and characterization of long-period exoplanets discovered in TESS observations, with a focus on understanding the demographics and influence of distant giant planets on their planetary systems. During her PhD at MIT, Zahra combined telescope observations, laboratory experiments, and modeling to study the surfaces, atmospheres, and formation of short-period hot super-Earth exoplanets.


 

Graduate Students

Mallory Harris

Mallory is in the final year of her Ph.D. (woohoo!) at the University of New Mexico, where she focuses on discovering cold planets using the TESS satellite. Her graduate research journey began with the search for single-transit events in TESS data from low-mass stars, leading to the validation of TOI-904 c, the coldest M dwarf planet discovered by TESS to date. For her dissertation, Mallory is developing a pipeline to search for long-period transiting planets orbiting low-mass stars and calculate their occurrence rates. As a Visiting Graduate Research Fellow at Caltech, she also began using TESS' capabilities to search for microlensing events. This effort resulted in the discovery of the first gravitationally bound microlensing world detected by TESS.



Ismael Mireles

Ismael is a fifth and final year PhD student focusing on detecting and characterizing warm Jupiters and their companions using TESS. He is a member of the TESS vetting team and the TESS Single Transit Planet Candidate Working Group. His work with the latter led to his discovery and validation of TOI-4600 c, the longest-period planet discovered by TESS. For his dissertation, he is determining the occurrence rate of small, inner companions to the warm Jupiters observed by TESS.

Dominic Oddo

Website: https://doddo15.github.io/

Dom (he/him) is a fifth year PhD student with a primary research focus in transiting circumbinary planets (CBPs) and a NASA FINESST Future Investigator. CBPs are exoplanets orbiting tight binary stellar systems, and they are an exciting lens to study the formation of both tight binary systems and exoplanets. His PhD dissertation project is to find an occurrence rate for this population of planets with the TESS mission. 

Brett Skinner

Sarah Stamer

Website: https://sstamer23.github.io/

Sarah is a first-year graduate student (and was previously a REU intern in our group!). Her pre-candidacy project consists of analyzing JWST NIRSpec transmission spectra data of the Hot Neptune LTT 9779b to learn more about the atmosphere of this "Hot Neptune Desert" dweller. Stay tuned for updates as she works towards a first-author paper in a year or so!



 

Previous Group Members


Graduate Students
Sara Jeffreys (UNM MS Physics 2022) - now a Telescope Operations Specialist at New Mexico State University

Mariam Mojtabai (NM Tech MS Physics 2022) - now a PhD student in Radiological Sciences at UT San Antonio

Undergraduate Students
Paul Steimle (exchange student at UNM in fall 2023 + spring 2024) - now M. Sc. student at University of Heidelberg/MPIA

Michael Bess - graduated spring 2023, now a PhD student in Astronomy at the University of Florida

Sarah Stamer - REU intern in summer 2022, now a PhD student at UNM
Molly Nies - REU intern in summer 2022 and honors thesis advisee, now a F-15 flight test engineer at Boeing