Group
2021: Sanjana Prabhu Desai, Jean-Luc Margot, Ashok Verma, Adrian Lam, Paul Pinchuk, Robert Geil.
2015: Danielle Hastings, Adam Greenberg, Anjali Modi, Oliver Bowman, Jean-Luc Margot, Ashok Verma.
2013: Brittany Miles, Sebastiano Padovan, Shantanu Naidu, Jean-Luc Margot, Adam Greenberg.
2010: Shantanu Naidu, Sebastiano Padovan, Michael Busch, Carrie Nugent, Julia Fang, Jean-Luc Margot.
Career outcomes
- Alumni of UCLA's Graduate Programs in Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences
- Alumni of UCLA's Graduate Program in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Postdocs
- Ashok Verma (2014-2022): Ashok worked on orbit determination and gravity field determination problems. He is now a Senior Flight Dynamics Engineer at Omitron, Inc.
- Michael Busch (2010-2012): Michael is an expert on asteroid observations, shape modeling, and spin measurements. He spent two years at UCLA, the second of which was funded by a Jansky Fellowship. Michael is now a Research Associate at the SETI Institute.
- Marie Yseboodt (2004-2006): Marie performed a theoretical and numerical study of the evolution of Mercury's obliquity. This work allowed us to translate spin and gravity measurements into knowledge about Mercury's interior structure. Marie is now a tenured researcher at the Royal Observatory in Belgium.
Graduate students
- Megan Li (Spring 2022-present): Megan is expanding our technosignature search capabilities and preparing the launch of our citizen science platform.
- Emily Whittaker (they/them) (Fall 2021-present): Emily is measuring asteroid properties with astronomical observations.
- Sanjana Prabhu Desai (Fall 2017-present): Sanjana is obtaining and analyzing radar observations of near-Earth asteroids.
- Paul Pinchuk (Fall 2017-2021 PhD): Paul analyzed radio observations of planetary systems with machine learning techniques to detect technosignatures. He is now a Researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
- Danielle Hastings (2015-2017 MS): Danielle studied the dynamics of multi-satellite and multi-planet systems.
- Adam Greenberg (2013-2017 PhD): Adam used advanced computational techniques to solve orbit determination and shape estimation problems. He is now a Senior Systems Engineer at Raytheon.
- M. Oliver Bowman (2014-2016 MS): Oliver participated in astronomical observations with Lick, Keck, and Arecibo.
- Shantanu Naidu (2010-2015 PhD): Shantanu studied the morphology and dynamics of near-Earth asteroids and binaries with radar observations. He is now a Scientist at NASA JPL.
- Sebastiano Padovan (2009-2014 PhD): Sebastiano investigated questions related to the gravity field, tides, interior, and crust of Mercury. He is now a Precise Orbit Determination Engineer at Eumetsat.
- Julia Fang (2010-2013 PhD): Julia used telescopic data and numerical simulations to study dynamical interactions in multi-planet and multi-satellite systems. Julia is now at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
- Carrie Nugent (2009-2013 PhD): Carrie came to UCLA in 2007 and studied with Prof. Kavner then with Prof. Russell before joining our group. She studied the Yarkovsky drift of near-Earth asteroids to place constraints on the dynamics and physical properties of asteroids. She is now an Assistant Professor at Olin College.
- Patrick Taylor (2004-2009 PhD): Patrick worked on dynamical and physical characterization of asteroid (54509) YORP, formerly known as 2000 PH5, providing the first direct observational evidence that an increase in the spin rate of the asteroid is due to the YORP effect. He then studied tidal interactions in close binary systems. Patrick is now Radar Division Head at NRAO.
- Phattarapong Chantarat (MS 2005): Pat designed and fabricated a chirp modulator to improve the resolution of planetary radar images. He now works in finance in Bangkok.
Undergraduate students
- Adrian Lam (Winter 2019-present): Adrian has worked on N-body simulations, lightcurve analysis, and Venus.
- Robert Geil (Winter 2020-Spring 2021): Robert wrote C code and GPU code to accelerate our SETI data processing pipeline.
- Myank Singhal (Fall 2018-Spring 2019): Myank created and used a GUI to create a labeled training set for a SETI machine learning application.
- Wynne Turner (Summer 2017-Summer 2018): Wynne worked on our database of asteroid properties measured by radar.
- Ben Duclos (Winter 2016-Summer 2018): Ben worked on improved shape representations for asteroids.
- Anjali Modi (Winter 2015-Summer 2016): Anjali worked on our database of asteroid properties measured by radar.
- Lydia Bingley (Spring 2014-Fall 2014): Lydia worked on improving estimates of the spin axis orientation of Venus.
- Zoya Chhabra (Spring 2014): Zoya worked on our database of asteroid properties measured by radar.
- Brittany Miles (Summer 2013-Winter 2014): Brittany worked on our database of asteroid properties measured by radar.
- Ivan Constantino (Summer 2013): Ivan worked on our database of asteroid properties measured by radar.
- Abhejit Rajagopal (Spring 2013): Abhe worked on our database of asteroid properties measured by radar.
- Brent Harris (Fall 2012-Winter 2013): Brent analyzed near-Earth asteroid radar data sets.
- Gabriel Lopez (Summer 2012-Winter 2013): Gabriel built a database of asteroid properties measured by radar.
- Adam Waszczak (Summer 2008 REU student from Cornell): Adam worked on planetary gravity fields and MESSENGER radio science data.
- Seth Jacobson (Spring 2007-2008): Seth analyzed Hubble Space Telescope images of binary trans-Neptunian objects.
- Emily Kramer (Summer 2007 REU student from MIT): Emily analyzed mutual events in the Kalliope/Linus binary system.
- Piyanat Kittiwisit (Spring 2007-2008): Piyanat analyzed high resolution topographic maps of the lunar polar regions.
- Greg Vesper (Summer 2005-Spring 2007): Greg analyzed Keck adaptive optics images of main belt asteroids in an effort to constrain the abundance of binary asteroids in that population.
- Prashant Sundar (Summer 2004): Prashant studied instrumentation concepts for planetary geodesy.