Stanley A. Baronett

Stanley’s current research develops multiphysics, multiscale simulations of protoplanetary disks that connect planetesimal-formation theory with synthetic observations for comparison with ALMA data. He studies how gas, dust, and radiation interact to shape the conditions under which planets form, using high-performance simulations and open-source scientific software. This work builds on models of dust–gas dynamics, the streaming instability, and stellar irradiation.

Stanley earned his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) in 2026, where he was a UNLV Foundation Board of Trustees Fellow and worked with Zhaohuan Zhu. He later held roles as a Nevada NASA Space Grant Consortium Graduate Research Fellow and Pre-Doctoral Research Analyst at the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA). These roles supported wide-ranging collaborations in computational astrophysics, from protoplanetary disk modeling and planetesimal formation to planetary dynamics and international code-comparison work.

Before pursuing astronomy, Stanley earned a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and worked in information technology for nearly a decade. He grew up in Las Vegas and lived in Honolulu for nine years. Outside of research, he enjoys Olympic weightlifting and making music, and has performed as a drummer and vocalist in several bands.