Welcome! My name is Luke Bouma, and you have found my research website.

I am an astronomer and physicist, and I am currently a 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellow at Caltech.

My main research topic is planets that orbit other stars — exoplanets. Exoplanet science is in a golden age of discovery, fueled by ever-more sensitive telescopes and ever-more clever data processing techniques.

I am especially interested in the issue of exoplanet origins. What processes produced the exoplanets that we see today? In what stellar and galactic environments does exoplanet evolution unfold? To tackle these questions, I use a mix of observational and theoretical tools, many of which are focused on baby planets hundreds of times younger than the Earth.

If you’re curious to learn more about me and my work, then click around. A full publication list is available here, and an academic CV is available here.