Research
I work on young, low-mass stars. Stars form in clouds of gas and dust, which contract under their own gravity. Initially, the proto-stars are hidden behind this envelope, but in later phases most of the mass concentrates in a circum-stellar disk. In this phase stars of spectral type M-F are called classical T Tauri stars (CTTS), and their more massive brethren, the A and B type progenitors are HerbigAeBe stars (HAeBe).
Most of my work is based on spectroscopy of these young stars observed with space telescopes like Chandra, XMM-Newton and Hubble.
The more we learn about early stellar evolution, the better we understand how stellar systems evolve in general and thus also how our Sun and Earth were formed.