Astronomy Colloquium Speaker Calendar

Forming planets interact with their natal disks, imprinting structure in dust and gas emissions, and kinematics that is now routinely observed with ALMA, extreme adaptive optics, and JWST. Disk physics itself, however, can generate many of the same signatures, complicating their interpretation while offering new ways to constrain planet-formation environments. I present computational frameworks for interpreting disk substructures, identifying forming planets, and characterizing disk thermodynamics. Using radiation–hydrodynamical simulations that self-consistently couple dust, gas, and radiation, I show how thermodynamics shapes observable features and how these models can be combined with machine-learning and population-level studies to connect disk signatures to mature exoplanet populations. I conclude by highlighting how next-generation computational resources will enable predictive modeling for ALMA’s wideband upgrade and future facilities such as ngVLA and HWO.