Joanna Drazkowska

Joanna Drazkowska is a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany, funded by the ERC Starting Grant PLANETOIDS. Her research focuses on planet formation theory, particularly numerical modeling of dust evolution in protoplanetary disks and planetesimal formation. She holds a doctoral degree from Heidelberg University and has held postdoctoral positions at LMU Munich, the University of Zurich, and Heidelberg. Key awards include the ERC Starting Grant (2021) and the Astronomy & Astrophysics Early Career Award (2021). Her work bridges astrophysical models with observations from ALMA and exoplanet studies. Current research emphasizes dust coagulation, hydrodynamic simulations, and the connection between disk structure and planetary system architectures.

Education: PhD in Theoretical Astrophysics (Heidelberg University, 2014), Postdoctoral Research at LMU Munich (2018–2022), University of Zurich (2015–2018). Collaborations include projects with Los Alamos National Laboratory and the RoSSBi code development. Group members include postdocs and PhD students working on topics like dust permeability, carbon depletion in disks, and giant planet formation.

Research Interests: Planet formation mechanisms, dust evolution processes, protoplanetary disk dynamics, and the interplay between exoplanet observations and theoretical models. Her team develops advanced numerical tools like the 'pebble predictor' for calculating pebble fluxes in disks.