JJ Hermes, PhD

JJ Hermes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy in the College of Arts & Sciences, where his research focuses on high-precision observations of the endpoints of stellar and planetary evolution, including compact binary systems. Hermes’ primary research centers on white dwarf stars—the final evolutionary state of more than 97 percent of all stars in the Milky Way. He studies pulsating and binary white dwarfs to measure their fundamental properties and uses these stars as exceptionally stable clocks to test general relativity, detect giant planets, and observe stellar evolution on human timescales. Before moving to Boston in 2019, Hermes was a Hubble Fellow at UNC Chapel Hill and an ERC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Warwick in central England. He completed a PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. Earlier in his career, Hermes worked as a journalist, serving as editor-in-chief The Daily Texan in 2007, and as a reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education in Washington, D.C.

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