Czekala Group Members

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Ian Czekala
Ian is a lecturer in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is broadly interested in star and planet formation, machine learning, and Bayesian inference for astrophysics.

Former Group Members

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Kristin Hopley
Kristin completed her MPhys thesis “Mapping the Inner Edge and Interior Cavity of a Kepler-Analog Circumbinary Protoplanetary Disk” at the University of St Andrews from 2023-24.
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Marylyn Rosenqvist
Marylyn completed her MPhys thesis “Mapping Kinematic Perturbations in the Protoplanetary Disk of HD 163296 Using Molecular Tracers CO and HCN” at the University of St Andrews from 2023-24.
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Carol Ballinger
Carol completed her MPhys thesis “Hierarchical Bayesian Modelling of Protoplanetary Disk Evolution Across Star Forming Regions” at the University of St Andrews from 2023-24.
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Mila De Fougerolles
Mila completed her BSc thesis “High Dimensional Parametric Models for Protoplanetary Disk Surface Brightness Modelling” at the University of St Andrews from 2023-24.
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Jeff Jennings
Jeff was an Eberly Research Fellow postdoc in the Astronomy and Astrophysics department at Pennsylvania State University. He focuses on protoplanetary disk science and statistical techniques for data analysis, including applications to image synthesis for astronomical interferometry. Jeff is now a software engineer at the Flatiron Institute / Center for Computational Astrophysics.
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Brianna Zawadzki
In 2023, Brianna completed her Ph.D. entitled “Investigating Planet Formation Through Simulation, Observation, And Machine Learning” at Pennsylvania State University. Her work at Penn State ranged from N-body planet formation simulations to ALMA observations of protoplanetary disks to development of regularized maximum likelihood imaging algorithms. Brianna is now a Brinson Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at Wesleyan University.
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Kadri M. Nizam
Kadri is a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University working on protoplanetary disk dynamics and machine learning for regularized maximum imaging algorithms. From 2021 - 2023, he worked on deep learning methods to emulate molecular line radiative transfer and contributed to the development of the MPoL project. He is now working on his Ph.D. as part of the BlackCAT X-ray telescope mission.
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Zoe Ko
Zoe worked with our group as an undergraduate student and physics major at the University of California, Berkeley. She worked on high resolution stellar spectroscopy and radial velocity analysis for circumbinary protoplanetary disks. Zoe started a Ph.D. in Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University in 2024.
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Tyler Quinn
Tyler is a former bachelors student in the astronomy and astrophysics major at Pennsylvania State University. During 2021 - 22 he worked on regularized maximum likelihood imaging algorithms.
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Hannah Grzybowski
Hannah worked on regularized maximum likelihood imaging algorithms in 2021, while she was an undergraduate student and astronomy and astrophysics major at Pennsylvania State University. Hannah started a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University in 2023.
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Robert Frazier
Robert is an undergraduate student and astronomy and astrophysics major at Pennsylvania State University. During 2021, he worked on regularized maximum likelihood imaging algorithms.
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Joseph M. Akana Murphy
Joey is a graduate student in the astronomy and astrophysics department at University of California, Santa Cruz, working on exoplanet detection and characterization. While Joey was a co-terminal masters student at Stanford University, Joey and Ian worked on flexible spectroscopic models for accretion signatures of pre-main sequence stars.