Judah Van Zandt

Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California, Santa Barbara

I'm a postdoc at UC Santa Barbara working with Brendan Bowler. I received my Ph.D. in 2025 from UCLA, where I worked with Erik Petigura on exoplanet occurrence and orbital architectures. My research combines radial velocities, astrometry, and imaging to measure what no single technique can.

I am interested in the relationships between the different objects that orbit stars. Some are planets, which can be small and rocky, or big and gaseous; some are close to their host star, while others orbit far away. Some aren't planets at all, and instead fall into the category of brown dwarfs, or are stars themselves. Right now I'm preparing for Gaia DR4, which will let me test how giant-planet populations depend on the mass of their host stars.