Dakotah is PhinisheD!

Dakotah Tyler has had a remarkable career that led him from college football field to the top of Maunakea. He just completed his PhD on the physics of exoplanet mass-loss. Today, the theoretical consensus is that envelope loss herds small planets into two distinct populations. Dakotah's thesis explored envelope loss both directly and indirectly. One highlight from his time at UCLA was his discovery of an extremely long plume of escaping Helium from the planet WASP-69b. This work was featured in the New York Times and other publications. Dakotah's energy is boundless. He was an excellent teaching fellow in our 300-student 'Origin of the Universe and Evolution of Life' course. During his graduate studies, he somehow found time to run planetarium shows, write a book on astronomy, start a podcast, and much more. Since graduating, Dakotah has been teaching physics and astronomy at Pomona college and attending to his other creative ventures, which you can read about here.