Dr. Andrea Isella is Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Rice University. He leads the Planet Formation and Circumstellar disks research group at Rice since July 2014. This group is a very recent addition to the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University!

Prior to coming to Rice, he was a postdoctoral researcher and Faculty Member at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. His primary area of research and interest in Planetary formation which requires the use and application of the world’s largest telescopes to penetrate deeply into the realm of newborn stars, protoplanetary disks, and similar physical phenomena to understand the processes for which newborn planetary systems come into existence. This a very recent addition to the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University!

Several of his ongoing research projects focus on the analysis of new and exciting ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) observations of protoplanetary disks. These observations have been made in order to understand the formation of planets by observing the environment where planets form, namely, the gas and dust-rich disks surrounding young stars, also known as protoplanetary disks.

Dr. Isella will delve into the processes and conditions in which planetary systems are formed and how exoplanets are born!