Teresa Paz Paneque Carreño (born November 15, 1997), known as Tere Paneque, is a Chilean–Spanish astronomer, author, and science communicator. Her research uses radio observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) to study the chemistry and structure of protoplanetary disks, the environments where planets form. In 2021 she was lead author of a study of the disk around the young star Elias 2-27 that reported possible evidence for gravitational instability as a way of forming giant planets.
Paneque is also known in Chile and across Latin America for explaining astronomy to children and teenagers through social media, a radio and podcast presence, and an illustrated book series, El universo según Carlota (The Universe According to Carlota). In 2023 she became the first woman to serve as a UNICEF ambassador in Chile. In 2024 she received a Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b Fellowship, and in 2025 she won an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Early life and education
Paneque was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1997, to a Cuban father, the biochemist Manuel Paneque, and a Chilean mother, the pharmaceutical chemist Paz Carreño. Her parents were completing doctoral research in Spain at the time of her birth. When she was five, the family moved to Glasgow for their postdoctoral research. At age nine she moved to Chile, where, because of her schooling in Europe, she entered the sixth grade of primary school, two years ahead of the usual age. The family settled in the San Miguel district of Santiago. During this period she became interested in robotics through Chile's FIRST Lego League Challenge and took part in the PENTA UC academic talent program of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
At 16, she began studying astronomy at the University of Chile, where she earned a bachelor's and a master's degree in astronomy. She began doctoral studies in 2020 at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Germany and Leiden University in the Netherlands, and completed her PhD at Leiden in 2024. Her doctoral thesis examined the vertical distribution of different molecules in protoplanetary disks.
Career Research Paneque studies how planets form, with a focus on the chemical conditions in planet-forming environments. Much of her work relies on data from ALMA, the radio observatory in northern Chile, to map the distribution of molecules in disks around young stars.
In 2021 she was lead author of a paper reporting spiral arms, a massive dust disk, and non-Keplerian gas motions in the disk of Elias 2-27. The authors proposed that these features were possible evidence of gravitational instability, one proposed mechanism for forming giant planets. She has also contributed to studies of the kinematic signatures of gravitational instability, measurements of disk mass, and the vertical structure and chemistry of protoplanetary disks (see Research publications).
In 2024 she was offered three of the most prominent postdoctoral fellowships in U.S. astronomy: the NASA Hubble Fellowship, the Jansky Fellowship, and the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. She accepted the last of these, which is funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation and supports early-career researchers in planetary astronomy, and which she could combine with a position at the University of Michigan. She is a member of the Michigan Society of Fellows and an assistant professor in the university's Department of Astronomy.
Science communication Paneque has posted about science on social media since 2019. By 2021 she had more than 440,000 followers across TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, and by late 2025 she had more than one million followers on TikTok and Instagram combined. Her content is aimed largely at children and adolescents, and she posts in Spanish.
Her first book, the illustrated El universo según Carlota (2021), is for children and young people and explains astronomical phenomena such as shooting stars through the character Carlota. The series has since grown to five volumes, and the fifth was published in 2025.
She has appeared at events run by the University of Chile, the Chilean Antarctic Institute, and Congreso Futuro. In 2021 she created the podcast Fuera de Órbita (Out of Orbit) for the radio station TXS Plus. In January 2023 she helped open the national Explora congress on school research and innovation, organized by Chile's Ministry of Science, and in 2024 she spoke with students and teachers at the Micro Macro Observatory in El Salvador. In June 2024 she returned to ESO as part of the academic delegation that accompanied President Gabriel Boric on a state tour of Germany and Sweden.
In January 2022, she took part in a widely covered Twitter debate about astrology with the Chilean astrologer and sociologist Consuelo Ulloa. Paneque argued that astrology lacks supporting evidence.
In March 2026, NASA invited her to attend the launch of the Artemis II mission, scheduled for April 1, 2026, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Awards and honors 2020 – Named a "Bacana Sub-30" (under-30 "cool woman") by the Fundación Mujeres Bacanas. 2021 – Best graduate thesis, Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, University of Chile. 2023 – Named a "Friend of UNICEF Chile" in January, and in November, on World Children's Day, became the first woman to serve as a UNICEF ambassador in Chile. 2024 – 51 Pegasi b Fellowship, Heising-Simons Foundation; she was the first Chilean to receive it. Also named one of the "100 Mujeres Líderes" (100 Women Leaders) by El Mercurio. 2025 – Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications, awarded by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine with Schmidt Sciences, in the category for research scientists. She was also included in the first edition of the periodic table of Chilean women scientists published by the Library of the National Congress of Chile.
Selected works Books El universo según Carlota series (Chile: Planeta Junior): El universo según Carlota [Asteroids and Shooting Stars]. 2021. ISBN 978-956-9992-81-0. El universo según Carlota – Agujeros negros y explosiones estelares [Black Holes and Stellar Explosions]. 2022. ISBN 978-956-6159-31-5. El universo según Carlota – Vida extraterrestre y exoplanetas [Extraterrestrial Life and Exoplanets]. 2023. ISBN 978-956-6159-98-8. El universo según Carlota – Galaxias lejanas y materia oscura [Distant Galaxies and Dark Matter]. 2024. El universo según Carlota – Inicio y final del cosmos [The Beginning and End of the Cosmos]. 2025.
Other: Abecedario astronómico [Astronomical Alphabet]. Chile: Unicef Chile. 2024. ISBN 978-92-806-5545-2.
Research publications The following are selected publications. A full list is available on Google Scholar. Hall, C.; Dong, R.; Teague, R.; Terry, J.; Pinte, C.; Paneque-Carreño, T.; Veronesi, B.; Alexander, R. D. et al. (December 1, 2020). "Predicting the Kinematic Evidence of Gravitational Instability". The Astrophysical Journal 904 (2): 148. ISSN 0004-637X. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/abac17. Paneque-Carreño, T.; Pérez, L. M.; Benisty, M.; Hall, C.; Veronesi, B.; Lodato, G.; Sierra, A.; Carpenter, J. M. et al. (June 1, 2021). "Spiral Arms and a Massive Dust Disk with Non-Keplerian Kinematics: Possible Evidence for Gravitational Instability in the Disk of Elias 2–27". The Astrophysical Journal 914 (2): 88. ISSN 0004-637X. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/abf243. Veronesi, Benedetta; Paneque-Carreño, Teresa; Lodato, Giuseppe; Testi, Leonardo; Pérez, Laura M.; Bertin, Giuseppe; Hall, Cassandra (June 1, 2021). "A Dynamical Measurement of the Disk Mass in Elias 2–27". The Astrophysical Journal Letters 914 (2): L27. ISSN 2041-8205. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/abfe6a. Terry, J. P.; Hall, C.; Longarini, C.; Lodato, G.; Toci, C.; Veronesi, B.; Paneque-Carreño, T.; Pinte, C. (December 30, 2021). "Constraining Protoplanetary Disk Mass Using the GI Wiggle". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 510 (2): 1671–1679. ISSN 0035-8711. doi:10.1093/mnras/stab3513. Lodato, G.; Rampinelli, L.; Viscardi, E.; Longarini, C.; Izquierdo, A.; Paneque-Carreño, T.; Testi, L.; Facchini, S.; Miotello, A.; Veronesi, B.; Hall, C. (November 12, 2022). "Dynamical mass measurements of two protoplanetary discs". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 518 (3): 4481–4493. ISSN 0035-8711. doi:10.1093/mnras/stac3223. Law, C.; Teague, R.; Öberg, K.; Rich, E.; Andrews, S.; Bae, J.; Benisty, M.; Facchini, S.; Flaherty, K.; Isella, A.; Jin, S.; Hashimoto, J.; Huang, J.; Loomis, R.; Long, F.; Romero-Mirza, C.; Paneque-Carreño, T.; Pérez, L.; Qi, C.; Schwarz, K.; Stadler, J.; Tsukagoshi, T.; Wilner, D.; van der Plas, G. (May 8, 2023). "Mapping Protoplanetary Disk Vertical Structure with CO Isotopologue Line Emission". The Astrophysical Journal 948 (1): 60. ISSN 0004-637X. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/acb3c4. Law, C.; Alarcón, F.; Cleeves, L.; Öberg, K.; Paneque-Carreño, T. (December 20, 2023). "CI Traces the Disk Atmosphere in the IM Lup Protoplanetary Disk". The Astrophysical Journal Letters 959 (2): L27. ISSN 0004-637X. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ad0e06.
References
External links
Leiden University website