January 16, 2026

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Speaker: Andrea Banzatti, Texas State University

Title: At the origins of water in planet-forming regions: the view of JWST on ice transport in protoplanetary disks

Abstract: I will review what the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed on water in planet-forming regions in the first 3 years of observations. The MIRI spectrograph on JWST observed about 100 young (~0.5-5 Myr) protoplanetary disks in the first cycles and will reach a global sample of about 350 disks by the end of Cycle 4. These spectra show in unprecedented detail (both spectrally and in sensitivity) the properties of thousands of molecular lines from water and a number of other molecules. The forest of water lines, in particular, shows radial excitation gradients from the inner disk accretion region out to the iceline at about 170 K, for the first time with some kinematic information from the Doppler line broadening. This unprecedented level of spectral detail is allowing the community, for the first time, to test a fundamental process in planet formation theories: the delivery of water to the inner planet-forming region by icy pebbles that migrate from the outer disk. I will summarize the progress made so far on this topic, showing which disks provide evidence for water enrichment and discussing the implications for their planetary systems in formation.

Biography: Dr. Andrea Banzatti did his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in physics in Milano, Italy, with a final thesis on millimeter interferometry of planet-forming disks performed at the European Southern Observatory headquarters near Munich, Germany. He then moved to the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland for his PhD in Astrophysics, where he started working on infrared spectroscopy observations of protoplanetary disks, in particular on water and it evolution during planet formation. After receiving his PhD in 2013, he moved to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore for a first postdoctoral appointment and to the University of Arizona for a second postdoc, expanding his research to all the major spectroscopic surveys of water vapor in disks and to the component analysis of high-resolution spectra from ground-based observatories. He took a position at Texas State University as Assistant Professor in 2019. Since 2023, he has led the first ground-breaking spectroscopic observations and discoveries obtained with JWST on water in planet-forming disks, with the current goal of providing a global and detailed view of its excitation and properties in connection to disk evolution and planet formation.