Research group

Matias Castro Tapia, MSc student
Structure and evolution of white dwarfs (arXiv:2301.04273)

Simon Guichandut, PhD student
Super-Eddington winds and convection in Type I X-ray bursts (arXiv:2103.08476)(arXiv:2301.08769)

Raphael Hardy, PhD student at Universite de Montreal, cosupervised with Paul Charbonneau
Dynamics of magnetized hot jupiter atmospheres (arXiv:2208.03387) (arXiv:2308.00892)

Previous group members

Graduate students

• Melissa Mendes, PhD 2023 (co-supervised with Prof. Charles Gale) “Nuclear Equations of State, Superfluidity Models, and Cold Neutron Star Observations”, now postdoc at TU Darmstadt
• Rafael Fuentes, PhD 2022 “Hydrodynamics of Convection with Composition Gradients: Salty Water and Jupiter”, now postdoc at University of Colorado, Boulder
• David Berardo, MSc 2017, “On the Formation of Gas Giant Planets Through Core Accretion”, now a PhD student at MIT
• Michael Zamfir, PhD 2014 “Probing Neutron Star Interiors with Type I X-ray Bursts”, MSc 2010 “Type I X-ray Bursts in GS 1826-24”, now working in financial modelling
• Gabriel-Dominique Marleau, MSc 2012, “Re-examining a key part of the core accretion formation scenario and constraining the initial entropy of directly-detected exoplanets”, now postdoc at the University of Tübingen.
• Diana Dragomir, MSc 2008, “Characterizing the orbits of long period exoplanets”. Diana is now an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico.
• Hugo Olivares, MSc 2008, “Steady-state model of neutron star crusts”. Hugo went on to do a PhD in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Ecole de technologie superieure in Montreal.
• Joanne Kettner, MSc 2007, “The study of quasi-periodic oscillations from Soft Gamma Repeaters”
• Caroline Niquette, MSc 2007, “Determination of the stability boundary for thermonuclear burning at the surface of an accreting neutron star”

Postdocs

• Vanessa Graber, MSI Postdoctoral Fellow 2016-2019, Neutron star astrophysics, superfluidity and superconductivity in neutron star cores. Currently senior postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) in Barcelona, Spain
• Matt Caplan, CITA National Fellow 2017-2019, now Assistant Professor at Illinois State University. Complex phases in neutron stars, astromaterials
• Kostas Gourgouliatos, CRAQ Postdoctoral Fellow 2012-2015, now Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics of the University of Patras, Greece
• David Tsang, Postdoctoral Fellow in Astrophysics 2012-2015, now Lecturer at the University of Bath, UK
• Zach Medin, Postdoctoral Fellow 2008-2010, now staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• Ian Dobbs-Dixon, CITA National Fellow 2007-2009, went on to be a Sagan Fellow at University of Washington, and is now a Faculty member at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Undergraduates

I have also been lucky to work with many excellent undergraduate students at McGill, too many to list here. Research possibilities include NSERC USRA summer awards, PHYS 396, or thesis projects for physics students.

Want to join?

There are often openings for graduate student and undergraduate student research projects. Contact me if you are interested!