Planar orthogonal polynomials play an important role in studying the statistical behavior of the eigenvalues of normal matrix ensembles. In this talk, I will present the strong asymptotics of planar orthogonal polynomials for the Gaussian weight with logarithmic singularities, and then describe their applications and recent progress in computing correlation kernels and partition functions. This talk is based on recent works with Seung-Yeop Lee, Torben Kruger, Sung-Soo Byun, and Seong-Mi Seo.
