About

Greetings! Welcome to my website.

My name is Alex Laroche and I am a first year PhD student at the University of Toronto (UofT) in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics. I am interested in stellar astrophysics, specifically binary stars and machine learning applications for stellar spectroscopy.

I am currently working with Josh Speagle on developing data-driven, generative models for stellar spectra. I have also recently started working with Maria Drout on studying intermediate-mass stripped stars in the Magellanic Clouds to better understand binary mass transfer.

If you would like to contact me, send me an email. If you would like to read more about my research click here.

Undergraduate Research

Prior to joining UofT, I received my BSc in Honours Physics from McGill University in 2022.

During my undergrad, my research focused on using a combination of simulations and statistics to investigate different aspects of our Universe. I was primarily interested in dark matter, strong gravitational lensing and 21cm cosmology. I worked in both Adrian Liu’s and Jonathan Sievers’ groups at McGill, and Jo Bovy’s group at UofT.