Add to Calendar 2026-10-05T16:00:00 2026-10-05T17:00:00 ASTRO Colloquium with Jason Rowe on Exoplanet Detection Event Information: Abstract: [Coming soon!] Bio: Dr. Jason Rowe received his PhD at the University of British Columbia for his work on measuring the reflectively of extra-solar planets using photometric measurements from the Canadian MOST Satellite. After his PhD Dr. Rowe joined the Kepler team as a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow contributing towards the first Kepler discoveries and was awarded the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement medal for his work on measuring fundamental parameters of exoplanets. Dr. Rowe then joined the SETI Institute as a research scientist and member of Kepler Science office and his continued work on exoplanets lead to the discovery of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of main-sequence stars and bulk validation of 812 extrasolar planets. During his tenure at SETI he was awarded his second NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement medal. Dr. Rowe then joined the JWST NIRISS Instrument team at Université de Montréal to develop techniques and tools to measure the atmospheres on extrasolar planets. Dr. Rowe is currently a Canada Research Chair in Extrasolar Planet Astrophysics, his current research goals are to determine what properties make a planet ‘Earth-like’ and whether there is life beyond Earth. He has authored and co-authored over 200 publications with over 16000 total citations. Learn more: See his research profile and bio from Bishop's University View his personal website here: https://www.jasonrowe.org/  See his page at the Trottier Institute website: https://exoplanetes.umontreal.ca/en/team-member/jason-rowe/  Read this article from Bishop's U news, "Dr. Rowe ranked 14 among Canada’s Top Physics Scientists"     Event Location: HENN 318

Add to Calendar 2026-10-19T16:00:00 2026-10-19T17:00:00 ASTRO Colloquium with Natalia Korsakova on the LISA Mission Event Information: Abstract: [TBD]   Bio: Dr. Natalia Korsakova is an astrophysicist and researcher specializing in gravitational-wave astronomy and computational data analysis. She is currently a prominent member of the LISA team within the ARTEMIS laboratory at the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (OCA) in Nice, France. Learn More: View the webpage for the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur: https://www.oca.eu/fr/  Event Location: HENN 318

Add to Calendar 2026-10-26T16:00:00 2026-10-26T17:00:00 ASTRO Colloquium with Pratika Dayal on Galaxy evolution Event Information: Abstract: [Coming soon!]   Bio: Pratika Dayal is a professor at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. After receiving her PhD from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA, Trieste, Italy), Dayal was a postdoctoral fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics (Potsdam, Germany), the Institute for Astronomy (Edinburgh, U.K.) and the Institute for Computational Astronomy (Durham, U.K.). She then spent a decade as a faculty member at the Kapteyn Institute at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) before joining the University of Toronto. Her research spans understanding galaxies and their black holes through 13.8 billion years of cosmic time, their impact on the universe, and shedding light on the nature of dark matter. Professor Dayal’s research group has been supported by several international grants including a starting grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC; 2016), a mid-career VIDI grant awarded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO, 2017) and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) discover grant (2025). For her work, she has also been awarded a Young Scientist medal (2017) by the International Union of Pure & Applied Physics. Dayal has advised more than 30 students over all career stages and is a core member of international cutting-edge astronomical research facilities including the James Webb Space Telescope, Euclid, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Firmly committed to fostering equity, diversity and inclusivity in academia, she has undertaken grassroots initiatives which include visiting high schools, giving lectures to student societies at all levels and being a tutor for undergraduate students to help them find the right study trajectory. Dayal also regularly gives outreach lectures and has collaborated with Stereoptik, a company comprising visual artists and musicians, to create a show about the history of the universe, called Stellaire. Learn More: See her faculty profile from the University of Toronto: https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/about/glance/new-faculty/2025-26/pratika-dayal  See her personal website: https://pratika24.wixsite.com/pratika-dayal  From the CITA website, watch video, "The emergence of galaxies in the first billion years": https://www.cita.utoronto.ca/items/emergence-galaxies-first-billion-years/    Event Location: HENN 318

Add to Calendar 2026-11-02T16:00:00 2026-11-02T17:00:00 ASTRO Colloquium with Lisa Dang on Exoplanet atmospheres Event Information: Abstract:  [Coming soon!] Bio:   Professor Dang studies exoplanets strikingly different from our Solar System planets and characterizes their climate with a variety of world class space-based and ground-based observatories, most excitingly with the recently launched JWST. Before the exoplanets era, the architecture of the Solar System’s planets has long been the primary inspiration for planet formation and evolution theories. Her research interests include exoplanets and their atmosphere characterization, exoplanet cartogrpahy, exoplanetary graviational microlensing, planetary climates and exoplanet demographics.  Professor Dang’s research interests include using time-series observation of exoplanets to map their emission and characterize their atmospheres using transit and eclipse spectroscopy with space telescopes, detecting the Doppler shifts of planetary signals using high-resolution spectra with some of the largest ground-based telescopes and detecting exoplanets using the gravitational microlensing technique with the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Learn More: See her faculty and bio from the University of Waterloo Read this article from the University of Waterloo news, "Professor Lisa Dang brings the heat with lava planet research" Meet Lisa in 60 seconds on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wy5Rtinlu6M    Event Location: HENN 318

Add to Calendar 2026-11-16T16:00:00 2026-11-16T17:00:00 ASTRO Colloquium with Ronan Kerr on Stellar formation/populations Event Information: Abstract: [Coming soon!] Bio: Dr. Ronan Kerr is a Canadian astrophysicist whose research primarily focuses on star formation, stellar populations, and the early evolution of stellar and planetary systems. Learn More: See his personal website here: https://www.rkerrastro.com/  Watch him on Youtube, "Revealing the processes guiding galactic star formation using young stellar populations" Event Location: HENN 318

Add to Calendar 2026-11-23T16:00:00 2026-11-23T17:00:00 ASTRO Colloquium with Renee Hložek Event Information: Abstract: [coming soon!] Bio: Prof. Renee Hložek is an Assistant Professor of Astrophysics at the Dunlap Institute in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto in Canada. She is a member of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration and the Simons Observatory, which study the cosmic microwave background (or CMB) at a very sharp angular resolution to unlock the secrets of the early universe and the period of star formation. She uses this data to answer questions about the structure of the universe, its initial conditions and its eventual fate using data. Hložek hails from South Africa, where she studied at the University of Pretoria and the University of Cape Town. She received her DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2011, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She was a Lyman Spitzer Jr. Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Astrophysics at Princeton University and the Spitzer-Cotsen Fellow in the Princeton Society of Fellows. She is also a TED Fellow.  Learn More: See her faculty bio from the University of Toronto: https://www.astro.utoronto.ca/people/faculty/name/renee-hlozek/  Read more about her from her Rhodes Project boi: https://rhodesproject.com/renee-hlozek-profile  See her video from Story Collider, "The Universe doesn't care about you": https://www.storycollider.org/singles/2020/9/23/renee-hlozek-the-universe-doesnt-care-about-you      Event Location: HENN 318