The Physics DepartmentMessage for Prospective Graduate Students
Dear Prospective Graduate Students,
Graduate school is a big decision and it is very important that you consider what research you want to conduct and where you want to study. I encourage you to reach out to many universities and many perspective supervisors to find a school and research group that best matches your interests.
So why study star and planet formation? Star and planet formation are exciting and rapidly changing fields thanks to new telescope technologies. Our research group covers the entire gambit of star formation research; we process raw data from telescopes to produce science-ready images, measure the physical properties of clouds, protostars, and disks from the data; construct models to explain the physical properties, and apply for future observations to follow-up targets. I seek motivated graduate students to lead observational projects that investigate the environments around young stars, the growth of dust to form planets, and the formation of small structures in large star-forming regions.
Why pursue this research at ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥? ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ is a smaller university in Canada, but we are still very active. In particular, the Queen’s Star Formation Group (QStar) is a growing and collegial team. QStar includes myself (Prof Sadavoy), my colleague Prof Laura Fissel, and our team of students and postdocs. We aim to make a community of researchers in star and planet formation, with group activities and discussions. As a new researcher, you would be welcome into this community with group activities and discussions. The QStar team also has strong collaborations with larger international surveys using observations from world-class telescopes as well as planning the next generation of telescopes.
If you are interested in pursuing graduate research in star and planet formation at ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥, please reach out to me to discuss potential projects. I also encourage you to look at past research conducted by our group to determine if our research excites and inspires you.
Sincerely,
Sarah Sadavoy
QStar co-lead