Andrew Cumming

Professor Andrew Cumming’s research has the goal of understanding the fundamental physics processes at work in the formation and evolution of exoplanets. With the large number of exoplanets now known and the increasing quality of observations that can characterize them, the challenge for theory is to draw connections with observations so that we can learn about how planets form and evolve, and constrain the physical processes at work in their interiors.

He has worked on statistical studies of the exoplanet population, using both frequentist and Bayesian techniques to characterize their occurrence rates and orbital properties such as the distributions of masses, orbital periods, and eccentricities. He has worked on different aspects of the evolution of gas giant planets. These include the atmospheric flows on tidally locked hot jupiters and whether ohmic heating can be responsible for inflating their radii. Most recently, he developed models for cooling gas giants at large separations from their host star. The aim is to use observations of directly-imaged young gas giants to constrain the physical conditions during their formation.

Professor Cumming has also worked extensively on the physics of neutron stars, including physical processes that also occur in planet interiors such as chemical separation, compositionally-driven convection, and magnetohydrodynamic processes.

Graduate Students

• Raphaël Hardy (PhD, Université de Montréal, co-advised with Paul Charbonneau, 09/2020-)

Former students (in the field of exoplanets only)

• Rafael Fuentes (PhD, 2022)
• Raphaël Hardy (MSc, 2020, Université de Montréal, co-advised with Paul Charbonneau)
• David Berardo (MSc, 2017)
• Gabriel-Dominique Marleau (MSc, 2012)
• Diana Dragomir (MSc, 2008)