Exoplanet Hunting: I have been a postdoctoral fellow at the Flatiron Institute (NYC) and at Princeton University since graduating from the University of Oxford in Summer 2022. My research focuses on citizen-powered exoplanet discoveries using NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) data. I am the project leader of Planet Hunters TESS, which is hosted by the Zooniverse platform. In my research I harnesses the power of citizen-science to find transit events in the data that were missed by the main detection pipelines and other teams of professional astronomers, while engaging over 35 thousand citizen-scientists in the exciting task of finding planets.

 

Why citizen science? Even though the main TESS pipeline is able to detect the vast majority of the transits in the TESS data, we have shown that humans can outperform automated detection pipelines for certain types of transits, especially single transits, as well as aperiodic transits and planets around active stars. This means that the population of candidates found by citizen science is quantifiably different from those being recorded elsewhere, with PHT being systematically more sensitive to longer period systems.  The planets that we find are particularly valuable scientifically as long-period transiting planets with measured masses are very rare. To date we have found over 115 planet candidates with Planet Hunters TESS, three of which has been confirmed and published, and a couple of others that are being looked into at the moment. 

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Other things I have worked on: Other research that I have enjoyed before starting this world-wide search for planets includes the characterisation of comets. These icy balls of dust spend most of their life-time in the cool outer regions of the Solar System and are, therefore, believed to be largely unchanged since the era of planetary formation. This makes them an ideal tool for studying the early conditions of the Solar System as well as properties of the protoplanetary disk. Other exciting reasons for studying this objects include that comets have hit the Earth in the past, such as the one that caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Studying these objects can therefore not only tell us about the past, but give us an insight into what would happen if a comet came close to the Earth in the future.

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It's not all about science: In addition to planets and comets, I also enjoy dabbling in social science research. A couple of years ago I collaborated with researchers from the Criminology Institute at the University of Cambridge to write a paper on the effects and mitigation strategies of attrition (drop-out) of volunteers taking part in longitudinal studies. We used the z-proso study, which looks at social development of children and youths, as a case study. 

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When I'm not working I like travelling to new countries and exploring different cultures. I love road biking and long days of hiking that end with good food and wine. 

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