Astronomy PhD candidate Brandon Radzom was recently awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Research Fellowship for the 2025-2026 academic year. This award provides graduate students who have achieved PhD candidacy with a $24,000 10-month stipend that allows them to fully focus on their dissertation research and writing. For Brandon, this means more time to dedicate to his dissertation on the origins of so-called "hot Jupiters" and other gaseous giant exoplanets orbiting perilously close to their parent stars. Brandon's dissertation research has already unveiled interesting insights into this question through measurements of stellar spin-planetary orbit alignments in hot Jupiter systems (Radzom et al. 2024, 2025), which are complemented by his ongoing studies involving numerical "N-body" dynamical simulations of hot and warm Jupiter systems as well as novel searches for hidden planetary companions in systems with hot Saturn-mass planets.
The College of Arts