Dr. Bryce T. Bolin
Event: 2026 Doc Morris Public Lecture
Date: Friday, April 24, 2026,
Time: 6:00 – 7:30 pm
Location: GMCS 333
About Dr. Bolin
Dr. Bolin is a Research Scientist with Eureka Scientific studying asteroids, comets and other interstellar objects that pass through our solar system to better understand solar system evolution.
Dr. Bolin graduated in 2018 with a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the Université Côte d’Azur under the direction of Dr. Marco Delbo and Dr. Alessandro Morbidelli where he worked to identify asteroid families older than two billion years.
He has used several observatory facilities to do his research, including the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), Keck Observatory, Gemini Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
While working on ZTF, he discovered the first inner-Venus asteroid (594913) ‘Ayló’chaxnim. Recently, he used Keck Observatory, JWST, and HST to study Earth co-orbitals, impacting asteroids, Oort cloud comets, and interstellar objects.
Abstract
The recent vast expansion in our knowledge of extrasolar systems reveals a significant diversity in planetary architectures. Our own solar system could be an ‘atypical’ example of the planetary formation process by comparison.
However, the recent discovery of three interstellar objects — 1I/ʻOumuamua, 2I/Borisov, and 3I/ATLAS — is providing an unprecedented opportunity to study samples from extrasolar systems up close as they pass through our planetary neighborhood.
In his talk, Dr. Bolin will discuss research on these and other exotic asteroids and comets, and what they imply for the formation and evolution of our solar system.