About Me
Fourth-year graduate student in Astrophysics at UC Santa Barbara
Hi, I'm Claire Finley, a PhD student at UC Santa Barbara working with Prof. Brendan P. Bowler. My research focuses on how giant planets form and evolve, with an emphasis on directly imaged exoplanets and their circumplanetary disks.
I'm currently leading a multiwavelength photometric program to characterize the accretion and circumplanetary disk properties of gas giant exoplanets using the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. Previously, I studied the parent volatile species in comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák as an intern at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center using data from NIRSPEC on Keck II. I began my PhD studies at The University of Texas at Austin in 2023 and earned my Master's of Arts in Astronomy in 2025. I left the program to follow Prof. Bowler to his new position at UCSB. I earned my Bachelor's of Science in Astronomy and Astrophysics from Villanova University in 2023, with minors in Physics and Art History.
If you're interested in my work or potential collaborations, I'd love to connect! Please feel free to reach out via email or check out my CV linked below.Contact Information