Biographical+Sketches

toc //**Members:** Please place your sketch in alphabetical order by last name//. (Use the //Heading 3//, not **boldface**, setting for the line with your name on it.)

**Fred Adams**
is a Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan. Research interests include star formation studies and extrasolar planets. He will be attending Exoplanets 2010 from 26 April to 28 May.

**Eric Agol**
is Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington. His main research interests are gravitational lensing, black holes, and extrasolar planets. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from Feb 8 - Mar 19.

**__[|Travis Barman]__**
is an astronomer at [|Lowell Observatory]. His main research interest is atmosphere modeling of exoplanets -- primarily giant planets (hot, cold, young or old). He also has worked on brown dwarfs, post-common envelope binaries, white dwarfs, and the direct imaging of young long-period planets. Barman will attend Exoplanets 2010 from March 1 to April 3rd.

Joe Barranco
is an Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy at San Francisco State University. His research interests include: computational astro/geophysical fluid dynamics, vortices in protoplanetary disks, settling of dust in protoplanetary disks and the formation of planetesimals, and SPH simulations of icy body collisions. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from April 26 - May 26.

Aaron Boley
is a Theory Fellow at the University of Florida. His research interests include radiation hydrodynamics, planet formation, disk evolution, the evolution of solids in disks, and star cluster formation at very high redshift. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from April 27th until May 28th.

Adam Burrows
Professor, Dept. of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University. His current work includes supernova theory, nuclear astrophysics, numerical astrophysics, extrasolar giant planets, planetary atmospheres, general exoplanet studies, and brown dwarf theory.

**Nick Cowan**
is a Research Associate in Astronomy at the University of Washington. He is interested in interpreting time-dependent observations of exoplanets (thermal maps of hot Jupiters, albedo maps of rocky planets, etc) and environmental-dependence of galaxies. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from Mar 15 - Apr 16.

[|Dan Fabrycky]
is a Michelson Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He works on orbital dynamics of planets, including tides, migration, and resonances. He has a special affection for time-domain surveys and transiting planets. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from Jan 25 - Feb 19.

**Eric Ford**

 * is an Assistant Professor in Astronomy at the University of Florida. His interests include the characterization and orbital dynamics of multiple-planet systems. He is attending ExoPlanets 2010 from Mar 29 - Apr 23. **

**Jonathan Fortney**

 * is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His is interested in characterizing exoplanets, from the modeling/theory side. He splits his time between the atmospheres and interiors of planets. He is attending ExoPlanets 2010 from Mar 22 - Mar 26 and Mar 29 - Apr 2. Not driving back home over the weekend would have led to a family riot. **

Scott Gaudi
is an Assistant Professor in Astronomy at the Ohio State University. He is interested in the determination of the demographics of exoplanets using a variety of methods. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from Mar 29 - Apr 23.

Brad Hansen
is Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. His interests include theoretical and observational studies of irradiated planetary atmospheres, planetary structure, planetary gravitational dynamics, and writing about himself in the third person. He is attending ExoPlanets 2010 from Jan 27 - Mar 31.

[|Christiane Helling]
is an SUPA Advanced Research Fellow at St Andrews University, Scotland. She is interested in modeling solar and subsolar-metallicity atmospheres of Brown Dwarfs and extrasolar giant planets, and in particular in cloud and turbulence modeling. She is attending Exoplanets 2010 from March 4 - April 2.

Ray Jayawardhana
is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto. His interests include planet formation, exoplanet characterization, direct imaging and spectroscopy as well as brown dwarfs and star formation. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from February 1 to 26.

**Heather Knutson**
is a Miller postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. She is an observer interested in characterizing the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, including their temperatures, compositions, and circulation patterns. She is attending Exoplanets 2010 from March 1-5.

[|Eiichiro Kokubo]
is an associate professor at Division of Theoretical Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. He is interested in theoretical study of formation of planetary systems. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from February 8 to 26.

[|Maciej Konacki]
is an Associate Professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (Polish Academy of Sciences). His research interests include the detection and characterization of exoplanets. Currently he is working on the detection of circumbinary planets. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from Jan 25 - Mar 18.

[|Dong Lai]
is a professor in Astronomy at Cornell. He usually works on compact objects, but has a general interest in fluid dynamics problems (disks, tides etc). He is on sabbatical leave at KITP Jan-Jun 2010.

Jeremy Leconte
is a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics of the Ecole Normale Superieure. he works with Gilles Chabrier and Isabelle Baraffe on modeling the formation and evolution of exoplanets, specifically close-in giant planets and their interaction with the host star. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from Mar 29 - Apr 23.

[|Rosemary Mardling]
is a senior lecturer in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University, Melbourne Australia. She works on few-body dynamics problems, especially those involving tides and stability, both in planetary systems and dense stellar systems. She has developed the first completely general three-body stability criterion (no free parameters!) and hopes to discuss its applications with many colleagues while she is at KITP (Jan 25-Feb 13). Rosemary is also very excited that her ``fixed-point'' theory for tidal evolution of coplanar two-planet systems is being used to study the internal structure of the transiting planet HAT-P-13b. She has now generalized the theory to mutually inclined systems and has some good news and some bad news for those hoping to measure the core structure of planets...

Kristen Menou
is Associate Professor in the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University. His main research interests are astrophysical fluid dynamics, extrasolar planets and gravitational-wave astronomy.

[|Althea Moorhead]
is a postdoc in the Astronomy Department at the University of Florida. Her research interests include planet dynamics and planet migration, and she studies these processes using N-body simulations, hydro, and analytics. She is attending Exoplanets from January 25 through February 19.

Christoph Mordasini
Is a Postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. He is interested in planetary population synthesis, core accretion, migration and the statistical properties of exoplanets. He works together with Yann Alibert, Willy Benz and Hubert Klahr. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from Mar 1 to Apr 2.

[|Gordon Ogilvie]
is Reader in Mathematical Astrophysics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. He is interested in the dynamics, fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics of astrophysical discs and planets and is attending Exoplanets from Jan 25 to Feb 19.

**Margaret Pan**
is a postdoc in the UC Berkeley astronomy department (where she's affiliated with CIPS and TAC). Her interests include orbital dynamics in extrasolar and solar system contexts, the Kuiper belt and other dusty debris disks, and self-similar solutions. She is attending Exoplanets from March 29 through April 23.

**[|Susanne Pfalzner]**
Is Associate Professor at the University of Cologne. Her main research intersts are protoplanetary discs, young star cluster environments and planet formation. She is attending Exoplanets 2010 form 8 Feb - 26 Feb.

**Edyta Podlewska-Gaca**
is a PhD student in the Department of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Szczecin (Poland). She works with Ewa Szuszkiewicz on the mean-motion resonances in the early stages of the planetary system evolution.

Emily Rauscher
is a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University. She works with Kristen Menou on modeling the atmospheric dynamics of exoplanets, specifically close-in giant planets ("hot Jupiters").

Andrew Shannon
is a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. His research interests centre on the evolution of debris disks, the growth of planetesimals, and the transition between the two regimes. He is attending Exoplanets from March 8th to April 2nd.

[|Avi Shporer]
is a postdoctoral fellow at [|LCOGT] and UCSB. He is an observer, interested mainly in the discovery and follow-up of transiting planets. He is attending the whole Exoplanets program.

[|Steinn Sigurðsson]
is an associate professor at Penn State and a co-PI of [|PSARC]. He is a theorist, interested in various aspects of planet formation, dynamical evolution and discovery. He is attending Exoplanets for most of May and likes long walks on the beach and local pinot noir.

**[|David Sing]** is a lecturer of astrophysics at the University of Exeter, UK. His main research interests are on transmission and emission spectra observations of transiting exoplanets using space-based and ground-based telescopes. He is attending Exoplanets from April 26 through May 28.

[|Christophe Sotin]
is a Senior Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory / Caltech. He works on the internal structure and dynamics of terrestrial planets (Earth, Venus, Mars) and icy moons (Titan, Europa, Enceladus). He has recently extended these observations and simulations to 'Earth-like' and 'Ocean' exoplanets. He is a team-member of the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) onboard the Cassini Spacecraft and is responsible for the implementation of the Titan observations.

Dave Spiegel
is a postdoc in the Dept. of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. He works with Adam Burrows on radiative transfer in the atmospheres of giant and mid-sized exoplanets and tidal dissipation in exoplanets and stars. He also studies terrestrial exoplanet climates, and habitability.

[|Karl Stapelfeldt]
is a research astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena CA. He specializes in observations of protoplanetary and debris disks from optical to millimeter wavelengths, and development of future space mission concepts for high contrast imaging of exoplanets.

[|Rachel A. Street]
is a project scientist at Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), based close to UCSB/KITP in Goleta, CA. Her research focuses on the discovery and characterization of new exoplanets via the techniques of transits and microlensing. She will be attending the whole Exoplanets program.

Guy Stringfellow
is research faculty at the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and will be in residence at KITP from April 25 through May 28. His research interests include star formation; jets, outflows, and accretion driven eruptions associated with the star formation process; novae and supernovae; Luminous Blue Variables and related massive stars; and of course exoplanets. The latter area include measuring timing variations of transit events and to characterize the atmospheres of extrasolar planets.

**Ewa Szuszkiewicz**
is a professor at the University of Szczecin (Poland) and the Centre for Advanced Studies in Astrobiology and Related Topics (CASA*). Her research interests include formation and evolution of planetary systems, accretion disc theory, numerical astrophysics, characterization of terrestrial planets, cosmic rays and their effects on biological systems, planetary atmospheres.

Edward W. Thommes
is a researcher at the University of Guelph. He is interested in the formation and dynamics of planetary systems, in particular the simulation thereof via N-body, hydrodynamic and hybrid methods. Outside of astronomy, his research interests include operations research, game theory and the study of populations via agent-based methods. He is a member of ORCAS.

Feng Tian
is a research scientist at LASP in the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is interested in the evolution of planetary atmospheres, in particular the atmosphere loss processes and photochemistry and climate. He will be in KITP between March 8th and March 22nd except for short leaves.

Wes Traub
is Chief Scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program, at JPL. His main interests are terrestrial exoplanets, exo-zodi brightness, spectroscopic characterization, coronagraphs, interferometry, and astrometry.

Stephane Udry
is Professor at the //Astronomy Department of the Geneva University// (Geneva Observatory). He is mainly active in the search and characterization of exoplanets. He is involved in several planet-search surveys using precise radial-velocity observations, in the visible and in the IR, targeting various types of stars. He also participates to collaborations following-up photometric transit candidates (CoRoT, SuperWASP). On the "project" side, he is a member of the ESPRESSO/VLT and CODEX/E-ELT consortia developing ultra-stable spectrographs for very high-precision RV measurements; he is a Co-I of SPHERE, an extreme-AO planet-finder imager for the VLT; and a scientific Co-PI of the ESA PLATO mission aiming at detecting transiting planets, down to the size of the Earth, out to the habitable zone, for most of the bright stars (V<10-11) of the sky.

__[|Orkan ("Matt") Umurhan]__
is a postdoc at Queen Mary University of London and a part time lecturer at the City College of San Francisco. His work centers around fundamental processes in shear flows as applied to astrophysical objects including disks and the atmospheres of exoplanets. He is currently working on exploring magnetic effects in stable layers of exoplanet atmospheres. His stay at KITP is from March 27 to May 10.

**Diana Valencia**
is a Poincare Postdoctoral Fellow at the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur (Nice, France). Her research comprises the structure, composition, physical evolution and habitability of super-Earths. She is attending Exoplanets 2010 from March 6th to April 2nd.

**Dimitri Veras**
is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida. He works with Eric Ford on the orbital dynamics of exosystems through analytical and N-body simulations, and dabbles in Solar System dynamics. He is attending Exoplanets 2010 from Jan 25 to Feb 26.

Alex Wolszczan
is a professor in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at Penn State University. Among other things, he is interested in searching for and characterizing planets around evolved stars, the brown dwarf - exoplanet connection, and the detection of planetary radio emission.

Andrew N. Youdin
is a postdoc at CITA //(Canadian Institute for Astrophysics)//. He/I studies/y planet formation, including the early stages of planetesimal growth, disk dynamics, turbulence, and chondrule formation. He is also interested in the structure and dynamics of exoplanet atmospheres. He is at exoplanets10 from March 4 to April 2.