Contact Information
1002 W. Green St.
Urbana, IL 61801
Research Description
My group studies the cutest stars - big and cuddly protostars only 10,000 to 100,000 years old, before they turn punky and begin to fuse hydrogen into helium in their core in about 1 million years. These stars are surrounded by envelopes of dust and gas that give us direct evidence of how stars form and how early planetary systems are going to form. Lately, we have been most excited about 1) how circumstellar disks evolve from the earliest stages and what impact the disk has on the evolution of planets via dust grain growth, and 2) the polarization of light from the circumstellar disk which arises from three mechanisms, aligned dust grains via magnetic field, mechanically aligned dust grains, and/or scattering.
The sources we study are usually deeply embedded in gas and dust, which means that they can only be observed at wavelengths longer than 10 microns. Thus, our group typically utilizes ALMA, JWST, and VLA observations to peer into stellar nurseries.
Current Graduate Students:
Past Graduate Students:
Shiya Wang (2008)
Yu-Shao "Jerry" Shiao (2008)
Woojin Kwon (2009)
Jonathan Seale (2010)
Hsin-Fang Chiang (2011)
I-Jen "Katherine" Lee (2013)
Ian Stephens (2013)
Dominique Segura-Cox (2017)
Erin Cox (2018)
Rachel Harrison (2022)
Frankie Encalada (2024)
Courses Taught
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, Astronomy
Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
External Links
Recent Publications
Coudé, S., Stephens, I. W., Myers, P. C., Karnath, N., Smith, H. A., Guzmán, A. E., Marin, J., Zucker, C., Andersson, B. G., Li, Z. Y., Looney, L. W., Novak, G., Pillai, T. G. S., Sadavoy, S. I., Sanhueza, P., & Soam, A. (2026). FIELDMAPS Data Release: Far-infrared Polarization in the “Bones” of the Milky Way. Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series, 282(1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/ae0e61
Drechsler, W. B., Tobin, J. J., Sheehan, P. D., Looney, L. W., Megeath, S. T., Van Dishoeck, E. F., Le Gouellec, V. J. M., Greene, T. P., Francis, L., Devaraj, R., Van Gelder, M., Hartmann, L., Tychoniec, L., Calvet, N., & Fischer, W. J. (2026). Accretion onto the Embedded Protostar L1527 IRS: Insights from JWST NIRSpec and MIRI Observations. Astrophysical Journal, 1000(2), Article 299. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae4a25
eDisk team (2026). Early Planet Formation in Embedded Disks (eDisk). XIX. Structures of Molecular Outflows. Astronomical Journal, 171(3), Article 172. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ae3135
Brunken, N. G. C., Boogert, A. C. A., van Dishoeck, E. F., Evans, N. J., Poteet, C. A., Slavicinska, K., Tychoniec, L., Nazari, P., Looney, L. W., Tyagi, H., Narang, M., Klaassen, P., Yang, Y., Kavanagh, P. J., Megeath, S. T., & Ressler, M. E. (2025). JWST Observations of Segregated12CO2and13CO2Ices in Protostellar Envelopes. ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, 9(8), 1992-2003. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.5c00037
Choi, Y., Kwon, W., Looney, L. W., & Tobin, J. J. (2025). A Bridge between Young Stars Formed by Gravitational Interaction. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 995(2), Article L75. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae279e