New UCL Physics & Astronomy Lecturer Mihkel Kama

I’m interested in the journey of chemical elements through protoplanetary disks into planets, both for the formation-diagnostic potential of element ratios and for their role in planetary habitability. As my bread and butter, I work with sub-millimetre observations and physical-chemical disk models, but I have quite broad interests in planet formation and exoplanets, and I enjoy exploring different concepts. A branch of my work is spectroscopy and compositions of B/A/F-type stars, both as a baseline for disks/planets and as a tool to study accreting material. Ideas and models abound on links between the chemical composition of disks, planets, and stars; but their empirical foundation is not yet very strong. I’m looking forward to working with the exoplanet community to drive new disk composition studies.
 
Having completed an undergraduate degree in physics at the University of Tartu, in my native Estonia, I did a MSc and PhD at the University of Amsterdam, where I got into molecular spectroscopy on the Herschel Space Observatory. My postdoc appointments were in Leiden with Ewine van Dishoeck where I began to work on chemical models and elemental abundance measurements in disks; and in Cambridge as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow where I further developed those efforts. I’ve recently completed the circle as a senior research fellow at the University of Tartu, where I’ve focussed on building up Estonia’s contribution to the Ariel mission.