Speakers for this event

• Dr. Sarah Millholland

  Dr. Sarah Millholland

  Professor Sarah Millholland studies a broad range of problems in exoplanetary science. Her research explores the demographics and diversity of extrasolar planetary systems and aims to constrain the physics of planet formation and evolution. She uses a synergistic approach involving analytic theory, numerical simulations, and statistical methods. Prof. Millholland is originally from Madison, Wisconsin. She obtained bachelor’s degrees in physics and applied mathematics from the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 2015. She then spent her first year of graduate school at the University of California Santa Cruz before transferring to Yale University. She received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and obtained her PhD in Astronomy from Yale in May 2020. She then moved to Princeton University, where she was a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow from 2020-2022. In July 2022, she joined the MIT Physics faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

• Emily Pass Ph.D.

  Emily Pass Ph.D.

  I am an observational astronomer who studies exoplanets and small stars as a Torres Postdoctoral Fellow for Exoplanet Research at MIT. During my time as a PhD student at Harvard University, I was a Peirce Fellow and NSERC Postgraduate Scholar, and my thesis was awarded the 2024 Fireman Prize. I obtained my BSc from the physics and astronomy co-op program at the University of Waterloo and was honoured with Canada’s National Co-op Student of the Year Award for some of my undergraduate research work. I’ve developed skills in high-performance computing, survey design, astronomical data analysis, and machine learning, presented posters and talks at a variety of conferences, published eight first-author papers, and contributed to the science maturation study for a space telescope.

  I am an avid reader and writer, receiving a minor in English Literature alongside my BSc. I enjoy science communication and outreach, and have been involved with such organizations as Let’s Talk Science (in particular, their CurioCity program that publishes science articles for a school-aged audience), the Halifax Discovery Centre, Astro McGill, the Waterloo Space Society, and Harvard’s Science in the News blog (check out my articles here). My other hobbies include cooking, climbing, and the Legend of Zelda.