Mass accretion properties of Class II YSOs in the Orion A star-forming region

My research plan for the next few years and for the next decade is to extend my current research to answers the broad questions: (1) How do disks evolve and form planetary systems? (2) What is the origin of life? We have been taking advantage of the Spitzer Space Telescope to reveal various stages of star formation and evolution of protoplanetary disks. One of our major achievements with Spitzer and its Infrared Spectrograph is the identification of a large sample of transitional disks. As suggested by our statistical study on the properties of transitional disks to understand the origin of central hole/gap in the transitional disks (Kim et al. 2009; Kim et al. 2011 in prep) and by some resolved gap/hole images of the transitional disks at the sub-mm or mm interferometer (e.g. Hughes et al. 2009 for GM Aur), giant planet formation seems to be the mechanism responsible for gaps in transitional disks. Therefore, deeper studies on protoplanetary disks, especially transitional disks, are indispensible to the study of how planetary system form and evolve. With opportunities for significantly improved angular resolution and sensitivity from ALMA, EVAL, SOFIA, JWST, SPICA, and GMT/TMT, as well as Herschel operating now (see, Fig 2.), I hereby propose projects which could be carried out in the near future and which would lead us closer to answering to some of the fundamental questions listed above.