Dr Karalidi is a theoretical astrophysicist interested in the characterization of brown dwarfs and exoplanets. Her work focuses on trying to understand more about these exciting objects by modeling their flux and polarization spectra and mapping their atmospheres (and potentially surfaces). She got her PhD from Leiden University in the Netherlands. She then was a postdoc at Steward Observatory, at the University of Arizona and at the Department of Astronomy, at the University of California Santa Cruz. She joined UCF as an Assistant Professor in 2019 and became an Associate Professor in 2024.
Dr Karalidi’s research focuses on the characterization of brown dwarf and imaged exoplanet atmospheres. Her team is using a suite of tools to model these atmospheres and produce flux and polarization spectra of atmospheres with different composition and clouds. These models are then compared against observations of brown dwarfs and imaged exoplanets to figure out what their atmospheres look like. Dr Karalidi’s models have been applied to observations of both space (Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescope) and ground- based telescopes (Keck, VLT).
To find out more about her research you can visit her website .
