Brendan Bowler
· Associate ProfessorUniversity of California, Santa Barbara · Physics
Active 2005–2024
About
Brendan Bowler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at UC Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii in 2013. His research focuses on tracing how planets form and evolve through direct imaging, spectroscopy, dynamics, and variability. He investigates exoplanets to understand their formation, growth, migration, demographics, and atmospheric evolution, using a combination of ground- and space-based facilities such as Keck Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope. His ultimate goal is to directly characterize terrestrial worlds in habitable zones to search for metabolic byproducts of life. Brendan Bowler's background includes postdoctoral fellowships at the California Institute of Technology, The University of Texas at Austin, and NASA Hubble. He was a faculty member at UT Austin from 2018 to 2024 before joining UC Santa Barbara in 2025. His contributions to the field have been recognized with awards including the 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics, the 2020 McDonald Observatory and UT Austin Department of Astronomy Board of Visitors Teaching Excellence Award, and the 2013 Astronomical Society of the Pacific Robert J. Trumpler Award.
Labs
Awards & honors
- 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics from the Alfred P.…
- 2020 McDonald Observatory and UT Austin Department of Astron…
- 2013 Astronomical Society of the Pacific Robert J. Trumpler…
Similar researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara
- Resume-aware match score
- Save to shortlist
- AI-drafted outreach
See your match with Brendan Bowler
PhdFit ranks faculty by your research interests, methods, and publications — grounded in their actual work, not templates.
- Free to start
- No credit card
- 30-second signup