Ruth Murray-Clay is a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. She received her bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy from Harvard University and Ph.D. in astrophysics from UC Berkeley. At UC Santa Cruz, Murray-Clay was named the inaugural holder of the E.K. Gunderson Family Chair in Theoretical Astrophysics, and in 2015 she won the Helen B. Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society. Murray-Clay studies the formation and evolution of the solar system and of planetary systems around other stars. She explores a broad range of physical processes that contribute to the ultimate structure of planetary systems, including the evolution of the protoplanetary disk, planet formation, gravitational dynamics, and the evolution of atmospheres. She also studies objects in the outer reaches of our solar system for clues to its dynamical evolution.
