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Dr. Thomas Augusteijn, Nordic Optical Telescope, La Palma, Spain
I started to study astronomy at the University of Amsterdam in 1982. From the very start I have been attracted by the observational side of
astronomy. At the start of 1999 I was appointed team leader of the ESO ``Medium-Size Telescopes'' team in the position of
staff astronomer. After my move to La Palma I first worked as a support astronomer at the Isaac Newton Group of
Telescopes, where I managed the operations of the INT and JKT telescopes. In 2009 I was oppointed Deputy-Director, and since October 2013 I am the
Director of NOT.
As far as I have time to do science, my general research interest is mainly centred on studying in general the formation and evolution of
(interacting) close binary systems, but also includes more detailed studies of specific (cataclysmic variable and low-mass X-ray binary)
systems. Over the past 15 years I have also to varying degree been involved in the study of optical/infra-red counterparts of gamma-ray
burst sources.
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Dr. Natalie Batalha, NASA Ames Research Center, USA
Dr. Batalha joined the faculty at San Jose State University in 2002 as Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy. She has been affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center since 2000 where she conducts research on extrasolar planet detection and stellar astrophysics.
As Director of the Systems Teaching Institute at the NASA Research Park , Dr. Batalha is responsible for creating programs and resources for students pursuing careers in fields relevant to the mission of NASA Ames Research Center. She is a co-Investigator for NASA's Kepler Mission. Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission whose objective is to identify and characterize habitable, earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars.
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Dr. Carlos del Burgo, Instituto Nacional de Astrof�sica, �ptica y Electr�nica (INAOE), Mexico
Dr. del Burgo is a staff researcher of the Astrophysics Department at the Instituto Nacional de Astrof�sica, �ptica y Electr�nica (INAOE), Mexico. As PhD student, he participated in the design, commissioning and first stage scientific exploitation of INTEGRAL, an instrument installed at the WHT to perform integral field spectroscopy. In his first postdoctoral years he became an expert on the study of dust properties in the interstellar medium. In the last 8 years he has being working on the study of debris disks around sun-like stars, characterization of brown dwarfs, low-mass stars and exoplanets, and participated (as co-I, PI or Project Scientist) in some instrumental projects to tackle these topics. He has lectured some undergraduate and postgraduate courses since 2005.
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Dr. Duncan Forgan, University of St. Andrews, UK
Dr. Duncan H. Forgan is a computational astrophysicist/astrobiologist,
currently a rsearch fellow at the University of St. Andrews, UK. His research centres on numerical simulations of
star and planet formation in young circumstellar discs. He
focuses on the early self-gravitating phase, where instabilities
are important for the evolution of both stars and planets. His
astrobiological research involves habitability studies of
exoplanets and exomoons in exotic planetary systems, as
well as improving theoretical estimates to assist the Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
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Dr. J. Lee Grenfell, German Aerospace Centre, Berlin, Germay
Dr. John Lee Grenfell is a researcher at the Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics
(ZAA) at the Berlin Institute of Technology (TUB), Germany. He obtained his
PhD from the University of Cambridge, England in 1996 and has held positions
at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and at the
Free University of Berlin (FUB), Germany. Dr. Grenfell�s scientific interests
include numerical modeling of photochemical and spectral responses of atmospheric
bio-indicators (i.e., chemical species which could indicate the presence of
life) in exoplanetary Earth-like atmospheres.
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Dr. Nader Haghighipour, University of Hawai'i, USA
Nader Haghighipour is a member of the faculty at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii and CoI of the UH astrobiology program. He has also been a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute for over 15 years. His area of expertise is planetary dynamics, planet formation, extrasolar planets, and habitability and his current research is on understanding the formation and dynamical evolution of habitable planets, both in solar system and in extrasolar planets. In the area of extrasolar planets, one very expansive aspect of his research is on the detection and characterization of planets in multiple stars system, and studying the possibility of their habitability. In 2012, he received a Humboldt award for my research on planets in binary stars systems. He is also am the vice president of the IAU Division F (Planetary Astronomy), and member of working groups of IAU commissions 7, 51 and 53. Furthermore, he is a member of the steering committees of Kepler Habitable zone, and Eclipsing Binary & Circumbinary Planet working groups.
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Dr. Nikku Madhusudan, Cambridge University, UK
Research Interests
- Atmospheric modeling of exoplanets (gas giants, ice giants, and super-Earths)
- Radiative transfer, planetary chemistry, and atmospheric retrieval methods for exoplanets
- Internal structure modeling of super-Earths, mass-radius relations, density functional theory
- Constraints on exoplanet formation and interiors from atmospheric observations
- Carbon-rich planets - interiors, atmospheres, formation scenarios
- Optimal planning of observations to constrain atmospheric properties of exoplanets
Education
PhD (MIT, USA, 2009), MS (MIT, USA, 2004), B. Tech (IIT-BHU, India, 2002)
PhD: Retrieval of atmospheric properties of extrasolar planets (MIT Physics, w/ Prof. Sara Seager)
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Dr. Eduardo Mart�n , Centro de Astrobiolog�a, Spain
Eduardo Martin works at the CSIC-INTA Centro de Astrobiolog�a in
Madrid since 2009. He received a PhD in Astrophysics in 1993 for
research on brown dwarfs and pre-main sequence low-mass stars carried
out at the Institut d�Astrophysique de Paris and the Instituto de
Astrof�sica de Canarias. Among other jobs, he has been a support
astronomer at Teide observatory and a member member of the faculty at
the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. His area of
expertise is observational astronomy at optical and near-infrared
wavelengths. His research interests include topics in star and planet
formation, brown dwarf and giant planet evolution, biomarkers and
sustainable telescopes. Whenever possible he likes to get inspiration
from other activities such as scuba diving, hiking, boating, cooking,
yoga and traveling to exotic places
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Prof. Karen J. Meech , University of Hawai'i, USA
Karen Meech is an astronomer at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. Her scientific interests include several areas of cometary science: evolution and aging processes in comets, observations of distant comets, Kuiper belt comets and astrobiology. Other scientific interests concern planetary formation and the search for extra-solar planetary systems, archaeoastronomy and variable stars. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Physics at Rice University in 1981, and her PhD in planetary astronomy at the MIT in 1987. Karen has been a Co-Investigator on the NASA Deep Impact mission, in charge of coordinating the world?s observing. She is playing a similar role for NASA's EPOXI and Stardust NExT Missions. She is leading an effort from the UH in collaboration with scientists at JPL and several other US and foreign institutions to develop a proposal for a NASA Discovery mission to the main belt comets. She has also been the president of the C51 Commission of the International Astronomic Union. Karen is the PI leading the UH NASA Astrobiology Institute, and is keenly interested in issues related to the origin of water on Earth and habitable planets. She is also very active in teaching and outreach. Karen apparently does not know what free time is, but if she had any she very much enjoys camping, hiking, swimming, scuba diving, piano playing and reading (in the hadean epoch of her career she actually practiced some of these things).
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Prof. Alessandro Morbidelli , Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, France
Alessandro Morbidelli works at Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur in Nice.
He is expert of formation and evolution of planetary systems, with
emphasis on dynamical aspects. He is associated member of the Royal
Academy in Belgium and President of Commission 7 of IAU. More information on his website.
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Prof. Didier Queloz , University of Cambridge, UK
Prof. Didier Queloz is at the origin of the exoplanet revolution in astrophysics. Since 1995 where he discovered the first giant planet outside the solar system together with Michel Mayor, he spent considerable effort improving the precision of the Doppler technique. In 2000, on this way back from a position at JPL, he developed with other colleagues the PRIMA-DDL system ESO/VLTI to detect of planetary orbits by astrometry. More recently he is involved in the emerging area of planetary transit detection where he is collaborating with the WASP team. He was as well a key actor in the first transit detection of a rocky planet by CoRot.
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Prof. Nuno Santos , University of Porto, Portugal
Nuno Santos is a researcher at the Centro de Astrof�sica da Universidade
do Porto (CAUP), and professor at the Department of Physics and
Astronomy at the same University. In CAUP he is leading the
EXOEarths team, counting with about 20 researchers and PhD students
working on different aspects of exoplanet research. These include a
participation in several planet search and characterization projects as
well as the study of the star-planet connection. He is also deeply
involved in the ESPRESSO (ESO) project and in the CHEOPS and PLATO
(ESA) missions.
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Dr. Catherine Walsh, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Dr Catherine Walsh is a research fellow at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. The bulk of her research is in the chemical modelling of astrophysical environments, in particular, protoplanetary disks around young stars, the birth sites of planets. She is currently studying the formation and distribution of complex organic molecules in disks, species which may be important for prebiotic chemistry in the early Solar System. She also studies the dust and gas structure of protoplanetary disks using ALMA observations. In the era of exoplanet detection and characterisation, Dr. Walsh has extended her research to model the chemistry in exoplanet atmospheres to �bridge the gap� between the chemistry occurring in protoplanetary disks and the resulting chemical composition of exoplanets. Outside of research, Dr Walsh enjoys hiking, running, cycling, reading, travelling and playing computer games.
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