Abstract: Stars are of fundamental importance to astronomy, and how they form and shape their environments influence everything from exoplanet studies to cosmology. In this talk, I will discuss recent ALMA observations of dwarf galaxies—excellent astrophysical laboratories for exploring star formation in the early Universe—and I will consider some future prospects for advancing our knowledge in this exciting field. As a bonus, I will present a novel idea for detecting planets bound to x-ray binaries, proposing that the x-ray light curves of such systems be inspected for signatures of transiting planets.