Jess Speedie awarded the '51 Pegasi b Fellowship'

Congratulations to Jess Speedie, who was announced today as one of the 8 outstanding post-doctoral scientists to be honoured the '51 Pegasi b Fellow Award' for 2025!

The 51 Pegasi b Fellowship recognizes exceptional postdoctoral scientists and provides them with the opportunity to conduct theoretical, observational, and experimental research in planetary astronomy.

As a 51 Pegasi b Fellow, Jess aims to develop an algorithm that can carefully align and stack a decade of ALMA observational data, correcting for the blurring effect that happens when combining images captured at different times, due to the orbital motion of materials in the planet-forming disks. This will enable her to provide the sharpest, most sensitive images of burgeoning planetary systems to date. With these compound observations, she hopes to advance an ongoing debate on whether planets form within or between the concentric rings of dusty, gaseous disks.

Jess also aims to expand our understanding of infant planets themselves. Observers have recently spotted what could be disks of formation material surrounding protoplanets. Modeling how ingredient materials orbit around an object will allow her to develop a technique for measuring the mass of young planets. With ALMA upgrades already underway, Jess’s approach could be tested on these disks—and some of the newest planets could be measured.

"What’s exciting is the potential for discovery. I have this sense that the universe as a whole is infinitely more creative than human minds — the kinds of things that happen out there, you can’t make that up. It’s better than science fiction. It’s truly wild." - Jess Speedie

Learn More: https://www.hsfoundation.org/fellow/jess-speedie/

Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Press Release: https://eaps.mit.edu/news-impact/mit-welcomes-2025-heising-simons-foundation-51-pegasi-b-fellow-jess-speedie/ 

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