I want to show this is something that people from all walks of careers and life can achieve,” Valencia says.
“I am a woman of colour and the U of T Scarborough campus is so diverse that I want to showcase that.
Valencia was one of only two Canadians to win, and the only winner in the category Astronomy – Astrophysics. The fellowship financially supports projects in any field so long as they aim to create knowledge and/or art. Valencia’s project recently won funding from the 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, a prestigious award that about 3,000 researchers, scholars and artists apply to each year, and only about 175 win. She’s working with multiple teams and will lead the analysis of first-of-its-kind data: measurements of low-mass exoplanets and stars that are precise and consistent enough to explore the connection between the composition of stars and planets. M any have suggested that planets’ compositions can be inferred by looking at the stars they orbit, and Valencia’s latest project is putting that theory to the test. Because different measuring instruments are often used, results can’t be reliably compared. When it comes to exoplanets’ composition, astrophysicists usually have only mass, radius and temperature to work with. “By using many other planets and seeing the variety, then we can understand if our solar system is very unique or if it’s following a normal pathway of planet formation,” says Valencia, associate professor in the department of physical and environmental sciences at U of T Scarborough. Understanding the composition of these planets would not only shed light on how our own solar system formed, but could be critical for finding another habitable world. The most common celestial objects throughout the galaxy are exoplanets - planets beyond our solar system - that have one to ten times the mass of Earth and one to two times Earth’s radius. Astrophysicist Diana Valencia seeks to answer a question she calls simple but elusive: What determines what planets are made of? The innards of planets are diverse and mysterious - Earth is rocky, Mercury is iron-rich and Neptune is an ice giant.
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