Dr. Weikai Cui joined CITA as a Postdoctoral Fellow in October 2026 after earning his doctorate from the University of Virginia in 2026. His research focuses on astrochemistry, interstellar molecules, chemical processes in the interstellar medium, and reactions occurring on icy grain surfaces. His work combines theoretical and computational chemistry with astrophysical applications to understand the molecular evolution of interstellar environments and the chemical processes that precede star and planet formation.

Dr. Paul Huet is joining CITA as a Postdoctoral Fellow in November 2026, after earning his doctoral degree at the Paris Observatory. His research focuses on planetary formation, planetary atmospheres, protoplanetary and debris disks, gas accretion onto planets, numerical modeling and observations, and exoplanets. His work combines numerical modeling with observations to investigate the formation and evolution of planetary systems, including the interaction between planets and their surrounding gaseous and dusty environments.

Dr. Sóley Hyman is a CITA National Fellow at Queen’s University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 2026. Her research focuses on galaxy dynamics, stellar orbits, chaos, and computational methods, with particular interest in the internal dynamics of galaxies. She studies how evolving stellar orbits drive morphological changes in galaxy simulations, including the role of chaotic stellar orbits in the evolution of bars and boxy-peanut-X (BPX) structures in disk galaxies.

Dr. Christian Kragh Jespersen is a CITA National Fellow and Schmidt AI in Science Fellow. His research focuses on galaxy evolution, astrostatistics, machine learning, and spectroscopy. He develops statistical and machine-learning methods for studying how galaxies and dark-matter halos form and cluster, with research spanning JWST observations of early galaxies to the study of Earth’s own night-sky glow. His work combines astronomical observations with statistical and computational methods to extract physical information from large datasets.

Dr. Xuan Ji joined CITA as a Postdoctoral Fellow in October 2026, after receiving her Ph.D. in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2026. Her research focuses on rocky exoplanet atmospheres, climate, and habitability. She uses both low-order mathematical models and numerical simulations to study the coupled dynamics of small rocky exoplanets’ interiors, atmospheres, and orbits. At CITA, she will contribute to an international effort to develop next-generation computational frameworks that connect physics-based models of exoplanet interiors and atmospheres with limited observations.

Dr. Ilija Medan joined CITA as a Postdoctoral Fellow in July 2026. He earned his Ph.D. from Georgia State University in 2023 under the supervision of Dr. Sébastien Lépine and subsequently served as a VIDA Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University from 2023 to 2026 under the supervision of Dr. Keivan Stassun. His research focuses on low-mass stars, the Solar Neighborhood and stellar populations, binary stars, spectroscopic surveys, astroinformatics and astrostatistics, and Milky Way chemodynamics. At CITA, he works under the advisement of Dr. Juna Kollmeier and contributes to SDSS-V, where he serves as FPS Design Implementation Lead, Solar Neighborhood Working Group Co-Chair, and a member of the Milky Way Mapper Data Analysis team.

Dr. William McClymont joined CITA as a Postdoctoral Fellow in September 2026 after completing his Ph.D. at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on galaxy evolution, high-redshift galaxies, star clusters, supermassive black holes, radiation-hydrodynamic simulations, and Monte Carlo radiative transfer. He combines cosmological radiation-hydrodynamic simulations with observations to investigate why galaxies formed and grew so rapidly in the early Universe and how this relates to the formation of dense star clusters, including the progenitors of globular clusters.

Dr. Maja Lujan Niemeyer is an incoming CITA National Fellow at the University of British Columbia, where she will work with the CHIME group. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Physics at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, under the supervision of Professor Eiichiro Komatsu. Her research focuses on line-intensity mapping, large-scale structure, and the Lyman-α emission line, using observations of diffuse emission to study galaxies, intergalactic gas, and the evolution of the early Universe. She is a member of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) collaboration. Her recent work includes the first detection of the galaxy–Lyman-α intensity cross-power spectrum in HETDEX data, providing a precise measurement of line-intensity mapping at cosmological scales.

Dr. Catherine Psarakis joined CITA as a Postdoctoral Fellow in October 2026 after completing her Ph.D. in the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences at UCLA. Her research focuses on magnetic induction, icy moons, interior modeling, planetary habitability, astrobiology, alternative solvents, and planetary geochemistry. She combines planetary-interior and magnetic-induction modeling with laboratory experiments investigating ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents under planetary conditions. Her work includes research conducted at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and seeks to connect planetary geophysics, geochemistry, and astrobiology in understanding where persistent liquid environments may exist within Solar System bodies and exoplanets. She is also an AAUS Scientific Diver, with interests in terrestrial analogue environments for planetary science and astrobiology.

Dr. Soumendra Kishore Roy is a Canada Impact+ Postdoctoral Fellow and a CITA Postdoctoral Fellow, who joined CITA in July 2026. He earned his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University in 2026. His research focuses on massive stellar evolution, gravitational-wave astrophysics, and gravitational-wave cosmology, with particular interest in population and cosmological-parameter inference. His core expertise is in hierarchical Bayesian inference, which he uses to connect models of binary stellar evolution with observations of compact-binary mergers and investigate their origins. He is involved in research associated with the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration.

Dr. Sabina Sagynbayeva is a CITA National Fellow whose research spans exoplanets, stars, astrostatistics, numerical simulations, theoretical astrophysics, and data analysis. Originally from Kazakhstan, she earned her Ph.D. from Stony Brook University. Her scientific interests include planet formation, the orbital architecture of exoplanets, and stellar magnetic activity. She also maintains an interdisciplinary creative practice in acting and singing.

Dr. Hui Tong is joining CITA as a Postdoctoral Fellow after receiving his doctorate from Monash University in 2026. His research focuses on gravitational-wave astronomy, compact-object mergers, black-hole populations, and Bayesian inference. His work uses gravitational-wave observations to investigate the properties and origins of merging compact objects and the astrophysical populations that produce them. He is affiliated with the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration and the OzGrav ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational-Wave Discovery.

Dr. Jonathan Zhang begins his Postdoctoral Fellowship at CITA after completing his doctorate at the University of Toronto in 2026. His research focuses on fast radio bursts and high-energy astrophysical phenomena, with particular interest in the physical mechanisms that generate these short-duration radio transients and their possible connections to magnetars and extreme magnetic environments.

Dr. Saiyang Zhang joins CITA as a Postdoctoral Fellow after completing his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Texas at Austin in August 2026. His research focuses on dark matter, the early Universe, primordial black holes, Population III stars, supermassive black holes, and large-scale structure, combining theoretical modelling, cosmological simulations, and computational methods to investigate the evolution of cosmic structure. His recent work has examined how primordial black holes may influence the formation of the first stars and galaxies and potentially seed the supermassive black holes observed in the early Universe, including through observations with JWST. He is also increasingly interested in machine learning and scientific discovery, including simulation-based inference and the application of large language models to cosmology and dark-matter research.