Two prestigious fellowships for Jonathan Gagné, who has returned to Montreal

Jonathan Gagné, who completed his Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal in 2015, is one of the Banting Postdoctoral Fellows from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) 2017-2018. Gagné also obtained a Trottier Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx). After a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, he has returned to Quebec where he will hold these fellowships at the University of Montreal, within iREx.

For a few years, Gagné will be able to devote himself to his research projects, which focus on fascinating objects that have been discovered relatively recently: objects with a mass similar to those of giant planets, but do not orbit a star and instead, are isolated in space. Sometimes known as “rogue planets”, these objects can help us learn more about exoplanets, the latter being generally much more difficult to study due to the proximity of their host star.

Congratulations, Jonathan, and welcome (back) to iREx!

About Banting Scholarships

Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships are offered annually to the best researchers from around the world to remain leaders in their field of research and contribute to the economic, social, and scientific advancement from Canada. Fellowships are distributed equally among the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). This year,  only 24 of the 217 applications submitted in the natural sciences and engineering domain were retained. Jonathan Gagné was the only astrophysicist who received a scholarship this year, receiving funding for his project: “The Opportunity of Isolated Planetary-Mass Objects to Characterize the Atmospheres of Giant Exoplanets.”

About Trottier Scholarships

Since 2015, Trottier postdoctoral fellowships have been offered to exceptional researchers in the field of exoplanet science and related fields. They allow these researchers to focus on their research projects, while participating in the different projects of the dynamic research team at the Institute for Research on Exoplanets.