Caeley Pittman

I am a third-year graduate student working with Prof. Catherine Espaillat to examine the relationship between young stars and their protoplanetary disks. Specifically, I am modeling ultraviolet data from the Hubble Space Telescope’s ULLYSES program to study the accretion of material onto T Tauri stars, as the energy produced by accretion heats the disk and influences the planet formation process. In the future, I hope to integrate data from ALMA and JWST into my analysis to connect the accretion process more directly to the properties of the surrounding protoplanetary disks.

I received my BA from William Jewell College, double-majoring in Physics and English. Before coming to Boston University, I performed research at William Jewell College, the Maria Mitchell Association, the University of Oxford, and CERN. Ultimately, I plan to become a research scientist and apply for NASA’s astronaut program. I am an NSF-GRFP fellow.

Website: http://blogs.bu.edu/cpittman/