Malena Rice

Malena Rice is an Assistant Professor in the Yale Department of Astronomy. Her research centers on the formation and evolution of planetary systems, spanning topics including exoplanets, stars, and the outer solar system. Dr. Rice’s recent work has focused on exoplanet spin-orbit distributions, hot and warm Jupiter evolution, stellar spectroscopy, TESS solar system science, and the dynamics of exoplanets within binary star systems.

Dr. Rice earned her B.A. degrees in Physics and Astrophysics at UC Berkeley in 2017 before going on to receive her M.S., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Astronomy at Yale University. She received the International Astronomical Union (IAU) PhD Prize for her dissertation research, and she spent one year as a Heising-Simons 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT Kavli Institute before returning to Yale Astronomy as an Assistant Professor in 2023.

Dr. Rice has held leadership roles in support of the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and NASA Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) space missions; the NASA ExoExplorers program to support early-career exoplanet scientists; and NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Analysis Group (ExoPAG). She has authored over 80 academic publications, and she has been recognized as an RCSA Scialog Fellow, a Rising Talent by the Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society, and a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.