Graduate Student Rayna Rampalli Awarded 51 Pegasi b Fellowship for Exoplanet Research

On Tuesday, April 7th, graduate student Rayna Rampalli was accepted into one of the top astronomy fellowship programs in the country. Rampalli is one of eight fellows inducted into the 2026 class of the Heising-Simons Foundation's 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. 

Named after the first known exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star, the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship provides early-career postdoctoral scientists the opportunity to lead transformative research in planetary astronomy. Each year, up to eight fellows with outstanding potential receive three-year, $468,000 grants to pursue novel theoretical, observational, or experimental studies. 

These fellowships enhance humanity's fundamental understanding of the Solar System, exoplanets, and the celestial processes that shape planetary systems. After completing the fellowship, fellows may apply for an additional year of funding to continue their postdoctoral work or support them if they receive a faculty position.

Under this fellowship, Rampalli will be moving to the University of California, San Diego this year to start her research. She will be studying how the chemical signatures of planet-hosting stars help map the ways exoplanets emerge across the Milky Way. Rather than interpreting each individual star-planet system in isolation, Rampalli is looking at the story these cosmic bodies have to tell us in aggregate.

"Stars are really a connective framework for me to understand how the planets that we study, the planet that we live on, and the solar system that we're a part of, sit in the greater galactic context." - Rayna Rampalli, graduate student

Throughout her career, Rampalli has contributed research to the field's glass ceiling and advocated for the experiences of women and women of color in astronomy. She is an active member and mentor of Dartmouth's EE Just Program, which is a community that supports minorities in STEM. She has also participated in many community science events during her time on campus. Her inclusive perspective is integral to her scientific practice.

To Rampalli, the galaxy is an important variable for planet formation. Stars migrate widely across the galaxy, and understanding their chemical composition helps to pinpoint where and how in the galaxy those stars and their planets originally formed. Rampalli is able to build population studies, or profiles, of planets that formed in similar parts of the galaxy. She combines datasets from ground and space-based stellar surveys to map how the galaxy's chemical and dynamical evolution leaves imprints on star chemistry and the occurrence of planets.

"We have all these different surveys, we get all these different planet yields, and we sort of interpret them in silos. I'm interested in thinking about them cohesively together, and what that means for how we interpret planet evolution across the galaxy." - Rayna Rampalli, graduate student

As a 51 Pegasi b Fellow, Rampalli will apply data-driven learning to build a comprehensive catalog of planets that links relevant chemical signals to their host stars' galactic origins across the Milky Way. She will map how planetary systems vary across these environments, preparing a cohesive framework for understanding the next generation of discoveries. She will also conduct a targeted planet search around stars that migrated from the galactic center, testing her predictions about what kinds of worlds they host.

Rampalli is excited about several upcoming astronomy missions, such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, that will probe underexplored regions of the galaxy. These missions will inevitably discover new planets, and Rampalli's population studies will provide the connective framework to place these new planets within the larger galactic context.

Rayna Rampalli is defending her Ph.D thesis on April 17th, and will graduate with her Ph.D in physics and astronomy from Dartmouth's Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies this Spring. She will be starting her fellowship at the University of California, San Diego this Fall. For more information about Rayna Rampalli's work, you can visit her website.

You can read the official announcement from the Heising-Simons Foundation's 51 Pegasi b Fellowship here. You can also read an overview of the fellowship, or take an in-depth look at the impact the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship can have on a researcher's career.