Matias Castro Tapia, PhD student
Structure and evolution of white dwarfs; crystallization and convection; white dwarf dynamos
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Research group
Numa Karolinski, PhD student
Neutron star winds
Neutron star winds
Shu Zhang, MSc student
Astrophysical penetrative convection
Astrophysical penetrative convection
Previous group members
- Raphaël Hardy, PhD 2025 (co-supervised with Paul Charbonneau at the University of Montreal) "Instabilité thermorésistive et oscillations magnétohydrodynamiques dans les atmosphères de Jupiter chaudes", MSc 2020 "Oscillations torsionnelles magnétohydrodynamiques auto-excitées dans les Jupiters chaudes"
- Simon Guichandut, PhD 2024 "Convection and Outflows from Accreting Neutron Stars during Thermonuclear Flashes", MSc 2020 "Regimes of photospheric radius expansion driven by high luminosities in Type I X-ray bursts"
- Melissa Mendes, PhD 2023 (co-supervised with Prof. Charles Gale) “Nuclear Equations of State, Superfluidity Models, and Cold Neutron Star Observations”, now postdoc at TU Darmstadt
- Rafael Fuentes, PhD 2022 “Hydrodynamics of Convection with Composition Gradients: Salty Water and Jupiter”, now postdoc at University of Colorado, Boulder
- Vanessa Graber, MSI Postdoctoral Fellow 2016-2019, Neutron star astrophysics, superfluidity and superconductivity in neutron star cores. Senior Lecturer and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at Royal Holloway University of London.
- Matt Caplan, CITA National Postdoctoral Fellow 2017-2019, now Associate Professor at Illinois State University. Complex phases in neutron stars, astromaterials
- David Berardo, MSc 2017, “On the Formation of Gas Giant Planets Through Core Accretion”, now a postdoc at MIT
- David Tsang, Postdoctoral Fellow in Astrophysics 2012-2015, now Senior Lecturer at the University of Bath, UK
- Kostas Gourgouliatos, CRAQ Postdoctoral Fellow 2012-2015, now Associate Professor at the Department of Physics of the University of Patras, Greece
- Michael Zamfir, PhD 2014 “Probing Neutron Star Interiors with Type I X-ray Bursts”, MSc 2010 “Type I X-ray Bursts in GS 1826-24”, now working in financial modelling
- Gabriel-Dominique Marleau, MSc 2012, “Re-examining a key part of the core accretion formation scenario and constraining the initial entropy of directly-detected exoplanets”, now postdoc at MPIA.
- Zach Medin, Postdoctoral Fellow 2008-2010, now staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
- Ian Dobbs-Dixon, CITA National Postdoctoral Fellow 2007-2009, went on to be a Sagan Fellow at University of Washington, and is now a Faculty member at NYU Abu Dhabi.
- Diana Dragomir, MSc 2008, “Characterizing the orbits of long period exoplanets”. Diana is now an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico.
- Hugo Olivares, MSc 2008, “Steady-state model of neutron star crusts”. Hugo went on to do a PhD in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Ecole de technologie superieure in Montreal.
- Joanne Kettner, MSc 2007, “The study of quasi-periodic oscillations from Soft Gamma Repeaters”
- Caroline Niquette, MSc 2007, “Determination of the stability boundary for thermonuclear burning at the surface of an accreting neutron star”
I have also been lucky to work with many outstanding undergraduate students at McGill, too many to list here. Research possibilities include NSERC USRA summer awards, PHYS 396, or thesis projects for physics students.
Want to join?
There are often openings for graduate student and undergraduate student research projects. Contact me if you are interested!