Four new members have joined the “Exoplanets and Astrobiology” group led by Enric Pallé. Malavika Vasits,Tianjun Gan, and Gloria Canocchi are postdoctoral researchers working on the SPEAR project funded by the European Research Council (ERC – Advanced Grant GA 101200674), and Dafne Martín is a predoctoral researcher funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (FPI – PID2024- 158486OB-C32).
Malavika Vasist Savoyant obtained her PhD in Astronomy from the university of Liege, Belgium under the supervision of Dr. Olivier Absil (PSILab) and Prof. Gilles Louppe (Montefiore institute). Her research mainly focused on using machine learning based Simulation based inference (SBI) algorithms to perform faster bulk retrievals on 5 T/Y brown dwarfs using emission spectra from JWST to identify trends in their atmospheres. Her research interests include Bayesian inference and uncertainty estimation; Bayesian model comparison; generative modelling used in exoplanet atmospheric retrievals across low-medium-high resolutions; bulk retrievals and finding trends in exoplanet/brown dwarf atmospheres.
Tianjun Gan obtained his PhD in Astronomy at Tsinghua University under the supervision of Profs. Shude Mao and Sharon X. Wang. His research is mainly focused on planet detection and characterization through photometric and spectroscopic observations. His research interests include formation and evolution of giant planets around M dwarfs; planet atmospheres through transmission spectroscopy; characterization and population statistics of brown dwarfs and low-mass M stars.
Gloria Canocchi obtained her PhD from the Astronomy Department at Stockholm University under the supervision of Dr. Karin Lind. Her research focuses on stellar spectroscopy, particularly for planet-hosting FGKM-type stars. She specializes in modelling stellar spectra using advanced 3D radiation-hydrodynamic model atmospheres and non-LTE radiative transfer techniques, with the aim of disentangling planetary absorption signals from stellar effects in high-resolution transmission spectra of exoplanets, ranging from hot Jupiters to sub-Neptunes.
Dafne Martín Domínguez obtained her Masters in “Research in Artificial Intelligence” at U.N.E.D, where her Master thesis explored the application of AI techniques to astrophysics research within the CTAO and LST consortia. Under the supervision of Daniel Nieto and Luis Manuel Sarro, she specialised in the optimisation and compression of Deep Neural Networks to satisfy the latency and throughput constraints required for their deployment on the CTAO telescopes’ trigger-system hardware.