Samuel Yee

Samuel Yee is a 51 Pegasi b Research Fellow at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, focusing on exoplanet demographics and formation mechanisms. He earned his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Princeton University in 2023, developing the TESS Grand Unified Hot Jupiter Survey to study population trends of gas giants.

• Education: B.S. in Physics with minor in Planetary Science (Caltech), Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences (Princeton)

His research explores Hot Jupiter formation, stellar obliquity, and planetary system architecture, combining data from NASA’s TESS mission and ground-based telescopes. Recent findings include orbital decay in WASP-12b and alignment studies of super-puff planets.

Key contributions include empirical spectral libraries and the specmatch-emp software used globally. Awards: Heising-Simons Foundation Fellowship (2023). Collaborative projects like HOT Neptune Initiative and California Legacy Survey highlight his work on planetary populations.