Shreyas Vissapragada selected for Forbes 30 Under 30 list
Pasadena, CA—Carnegie Science planetary astronomer Shreyas Vissapragada was recognized as a member of the 15th annual Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Science category.
For the 2026 cohort, the 30 Under 30 global platform recognized 600 North American early-career leaders in 20 industries. The honorees were chosen for their “imagination, intelligence, and plenty of grit,” which they are using to shape the future of their fields.
The selection highlights Vissapragada’s efforts to unravel the life stories of worlds beyond our Solar System, revealing how their atmospheres and orbits change over time.
He is particularly interested in exoplanets that are losing their atmospheres, which he studies using a suite of observational methods and tools, including the Hubble Space Telescope—for which he is Co-PI of the largest exoplanet program ever awarded in the telescope’s history—JWST, and the WINERED spectrograph on the Magellan telescopes. He is also interested in super-rare Neptune-sized planets that may be the exposed cores of gas giants that lost their atmospheres, which he searches for using radial velocity data.
Taken together, Vissapragada’s research is deepening our understanding of planetary atmospheres and helping astronomers make sense of the vast diversity of distant worlds. From discovering new ultra-dense Neptune-sized planets to measuring helium escaping from an exoplanet’s atmosphere—if a planet is doing something unusual, he wants to know about it.
Vissapragada, who joined Carnegie as the Observatories’ prestigious Hale Scholar in late 2024, is also a prolific fundraiser—skilled at making the case for his ideas and developing a plan for executing on them. In the last year, he’s raised over $1 million for his own research program.
“Congratulations to Shreyas on this achievement,” said Carnegie Science President John Mulchaey. “In 2024, when we made the decision to expand exoplanet expertise to our Carnegie Observatories community, he is exactly the kind of scientist we were looking for—someone who seeks interesting connections, develops novel approaches, and crosses disciplinary boundaries in the name of discovery. I am excited to see what his future holds and confident that it will include great science.”