The BDNYC team is pleased to announce that Dr. Daniella Bardalez Gagliuffi has accepted an Assistant Professor position at Amherst College, and Dr. Johanna Vos has been awarded a Royal Society – Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellowship.

Dr. Daniella Bardalez Gagliuffi is an astrophysicist originally from Lima, Peru. She completed her bachelor’s degree at MIT and obtained a PhD at the University of California, San Diego, both in Physics. She recently completed five years of postdoctoral work at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and is moving on to be an Assistant Professor of Astrophysics at Amherst College.

Amherst College, located in western Massachusetts, is the foremost liberal arts college in the US. Amherst is part of the Five College consortium, which includes three other nearby liberal arts schools and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which is a PhD granting institution.

Bardalez Gagliuffi will be teaching physics and astronomy courses, continuing her research in exoplanets and low mass stars, as well as building her research group with undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows from the Five Colleges. Bardalez Gagliuffi’s research focuses on identifying population trends from orbital parameters and atmospheric markers to characterize the formation pathways of giant exoplanets and brown dwarfs.

Dr. Johanna Vos is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the BDNYC research group at the American Museum of Natural History. Before coming to NYC, she completed her undergraduate degree at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland and her PhD in Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Vos has been awarded a Royal Society – Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellowship. This long-term fellowship will allow Vos to move back home to Ireland and begin her career as an independent researcher.

Vos’ research focuses on understanding the weather on worlds beyond our solar system. Just like planets in our own solar system, the atmospheres of extrasolar planets are home to atmospheric processes including clouds, winds, and aurorae. Vos uses telescopes around the world and in space to study these phenomena in detail.

On what she’s most looking forward to with her new position, Bardalez Gagliuffi shares, “This is a very exciting time in astronomy! Especially now that the James Webb Space Telescope is operating even better than expected. I can’t wait to share this excitement with my students and train the next generation of scientists and critical thinkers.”

On her new position, Vos comments, “I am most excited about the freedom this fellowship will give me to start my own independent research program and to start to build a group exploring exoplanet atmospheres.”

You can read more about Dr. Daniella Bardalez Gagliuffi’s new position on the Amherst faculty page, and follow Dr. Johanna Vos’ research journey back to Dublin on her website and Twitter account. The entire BDNYC team congratulates Bardalez Gagliuffi and Vos on their exciting new positions, and wishes them the best of luck in all their future research!