Cassandra Hall, a computational astrophysicist in Franklin College’s physics and astronomy department, has been named a recipient of a 2026 Cottrell Scholar Award for an outstanding proposal combining research and science education from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. 

She is one of 24 awardees, early-career scientists in chemistry, physics, and astronomy across the United States and Canada.

Hall studies super earths, rocky planets outside our solar system that orbit extremely close to their host stars. There are many of these tightly packed planetary systems, but scientists still do not understand how they form or why our own solar system lacks them. 

Despite their abundance, astronomers still do not understand how these planetary systems form, or why our own solar system lacks them.

“There are thousands of candidate super earths that we have detected in our galaxy,” Hall said. “But we still don’t know what physical processes determine how they assemble, migrate and ultimately settle into the architectures we observe.”

Hall plans to use the $120,000 in award funding to develop advanced computer simulations to study how planets assemble inside disks of gas and dust around young stars, and how newly formed planets migrate through their environments. She hopes this work will identify the physical processes that shape these systems. 

From her computer simulations, she plans to develop virtual reality planetarium experiences, along with lesson plans for Georgia schools. 

“Planet formation happens in environments that are impossible to see with the naked eye,” Hall said. “Virtual reality will allow students to step inside these systems and explore them in ways that build intuition and spatial reasoning.”

Read more on Hall’s research.