Michael Radica, a PhD student at IREx, recently completed his PhD degree at the Université de Montréal. Here, he summarizes his research project.
To understand our own Solar System’s place in the context of the wider population of planetary systems, it is first essential to understand the diversity of exoplanets themselves. In the past few years, low-resolution spectroscopy from space has become the tool of choice to probe exoplanet atmospheres and gain insights into the physics and chemistry that govern their formation and evolution. During my PhD, I have contributed to atmosphere studies made with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), spanning a wide variety of exoplanets. I also designed widely used tools to analyze observations from the Canadian instrument NIRISS’s SOSS mode — one of the key modes for JWST exoplanet studies.
Michael completed his PhD degree between 2019 and 2024, under the supervision of IREx professor David Lafrenière. His thesis will be available soon on Papyrus.