William Balmer
Graduate Research Assistant
Johns Hopkins University
Space Telescope Science Institute
Biography
William is a PhD student and text-adventure author. They are currently attending Johns Hopkins University (Piscataway land), studying in the Physics and Astronomy Department. They conduct research at the Space Telescope Science Institute in order to understand the growth, evolution , and composition of giant planets, brown dwarfs, and very low mass stars. They graduated from Amherst College (Nonotuck land) in May 2021 with a Bachelors of Arts in Astronomy and Physics, receiving a departmental recommendation for summa cum laude honors based on their thesis research. You can read an informal description of their research, peruse various blog posts, and view their astrophotography, over on their personal website.
- High contrast imaging
- Self-luminous giant planets
- Atmospheric retrievals
- Accretion & accretion variability
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Graduate (Ph.D.) student in Astronomy, 2021-present
Johns Hopkins University
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Bachelors of Arts cum laude, Physics & Astronomy double maj., 2017-2021
Amherst College
Experience
- Currently investigating the formation and atmospheres of Brown Dwarfs and exoplanets using space and ground based telescopes
- Conducted angular and spectral differential imaging to search transitional disks for forming exoplanets
- Calibrated absolute astrometric solution for the Visible Light Adaptive Optics (VisAO) instrument
- Transition Disk Database Project Lead: coordinated and managed junior researchers in aggregating data and developing a platform for a centralized, public record of the properties of over 200 transition disks
- Contributed to GAPlanetS project code and data reduction
- Performed space telescope mission yield simulations for Miniaturized Distributed Occulture/Telescope (mDOT) mission
- Contributed to EXOSIMS project code (Savransky et al. 2017)
- TA for ASTR112 (2019F), ASTR337 (2020F), ASTR341 (2021S)
- Conducted data collection/reduction, telescope setup/operation, grading/rubric construction, and assisted students with coding challenges. Led a lecture on the implementation of fourier domain image filtering.
Awards
Recent Publications
Presentations
Where possible I’ve included links to slides or posters associated with my presentations.
“The orbit and Hα variability of HD 142527B” STScI Spring Symposium, April 19th-24th, 2021
“Adolescent astronomy: Planet formation, Direct imaging, and early-career astronomy research” UMass Astronomy Club, April 20th, 2021
“Drums in the Deep: constraining the orbit and photometric variability of the chasm-carving M-dwarf HD 142527B” AAS 237th meeting, Jan 13th, 2021
“Exploring the Transition Disk Population with a public facing database” AAS 235th meeting, Jan 7th, 2020
Outreach & Science communication
Science communication - Astronomy Editor, Amherst STEM Network | October 2019 – present
Science communication - Writer, personal blog | June 2018 – present
In the Press
Articles I’ve written or been interviewed for. Last updated May 14th, 2021.
“Reaching for the Stars: William Balmer Thesis Spotlight” by Sarah Lapean in The Amherst STEM Network on May 14th, 2021.
“The Orbit and Growth of HD 142527B” by William Balmer in Astrobites, March 14th, 2021.
“Planetary cradles: UMass/FCAD colloquium speaker Feng Long presents ALMA view of early solar systems” by William Balmer in The Amherst STEM Network Magazine, Issue 1.3, Fall 2020.
“Astronomy Summer Research Teams takes Physics Colloquia by Storm”1 by William Balmer in The Amherst STEM Network Magazine, Issue 1.3, Fall 2020.
“Thoughts on Thesis: William Balmer ’21” by Maxim Melnichuk in The Amherst Student on September 23rd, 2020.
“What makes a planet? Daniela Bardalez Gagliuffi seeks answers in the lowest mass stars” by William Balmer in The Amherst STEM Network Magazine, Issue 1.1, Spring 2020.
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Series of multiple articles. ↩︎