SCIENTIFIC TEAM THOT
Dr. Andrés Moya Bedón
HEAD OF THE PROJECT THOT.
He is a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Birmingham from October-2017.
He has been an active academic researcher for 15 years with 78 publications in international peer-reviewed journals, more than 1961 citations and an h-index of 24 (source ADS). He has acted as a referee for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Astrophysical Journal, New Astronomy, MNRAS, and Astrophysics & Scape Science. He has presented talks at international conferences and meetings, eight of them as an invited speaker. He has co-directed two Ph.D. theses and four Master Thesis, and participated in 4 Ph.D. Thesis Committees and more than 20 Master Thesis Committees. Dr. Moya has already led a WP for stellar dating for the project CARMENES, an exoplanetary searching spectrograph at Calar Alto Observatory. Of particular interest is the leadership of Dr. Moya of the space mission proposal PlanetVision, where he led an international consortium to answer the ESA’s first call for proposals for S-Class missions. Dr. Moya was the head of the Master in Astronomy and Astrophysics program at the Valencia International University, where he also taught Exoplanets and Astrobiology (2015/16). He has given an invited seminar at the Master of Physics of the University of Granada related with exoplanets and astrobiology. He has experience working in different countries (two years at the Observatoire de Paris – Meudon, six years at Centro de Astrobiología – INTA/CSIC in Madrid and four years as post-doctoral at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía – CSIC in Granada). He is the leader of the asteroseismic studies in the context of the first ESA S-Mission, CHEOPS, and he is a member of the scientific consortia of the space missions Plato (ESA) and Kepler (NASA). He is an active and passionate communicator, with a large record of outreach talks and papers.
Prof. Bill Chaplin
SUPERVISOR PROJECT THOT.
Prof. Chaplin is recognized as a world-leading expert in asteroseismology and helioseismology, in particular in the analysis of cool stars showing solar-like oscillations. Chaplin has leadership positions in the NASA Kepler Mission: He is a member of the Kepler User’s Panel, a member of the Kepler Asteroseismology Investigation Steering Committee (KAI-SC), which manages the 600+ membership of the international Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium (KASC), and is the chair of the KASC working group on solar-type stars. Additionally, he leads the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Operations Centre (KASOC) team in its close interactions with the exoplanet community, using asteroseismology to characterise Kepler host stars and their planets. He also has a leading role in the asteroseismic preparations for the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). He is responsible for developing the automated tools for the ESA-approved PLATO Mission that will be needed to extract asteroseismic parameters from the data. He is also coordinating the work on solar-like oscillators in the EU FP7 Exploitation of Space Data for Innovative Helio- and Asteroseismology (SPACEINN) project. Chaplin led the analysis and publication of the first results from Kepler on solar-type stars, and the first comprehensive asteroseismic survey of more than 500 targets observed by Kepler, which was published in Science. Subsequently, Chaplin and colleagues have developed techniques for aging stars using asteroseismology. He led the production of the first asteroseismic Kepler catalogue of properties of solar-type field stars, which involved a careful and wide-ranging analysis using more than 10 independent analysis pipelines. He is the principal investigator on the BiSON project.
He is a co-author of over 150 research papers in scientific journals (with an H-index of 32), in the fields of solar and stellar physics.
He is also the author of a book on helioseismology. He is actively engaged in promoting solar and stellar research in both national and international media, including recent appearances on the BBC to discuss results from Kepler.
Dr. Andrea Miglio
Stellar models, theoretical asteroseismology.
Dr. Miglio has led the international community in investigating and exploiting the potential of asteroseismology for the study of red giants, and their use in stellar population studies. He conceived and leads the “asteroSTEP” consortium, a collaboration involving representatives from major ground-based surveys and the asteroseismology missions Kepler, K2, and CoRoT
Dr. Miglio is Lecturer in Astrophysics. He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals in the field of stellar physics and stellar variability. He is actively involved in the activities and planning of several working groups within the space missions CoRoT, Kepler and the ESA planet-finding candidate mission PLATO.
The common thread of Andrea’s research activities is the development and application of asteroseismic techniques to infer details about the internal structure of stars and to determine precise and accurate properties of large ensembles of stars, which are key to understanding the formation and chemo-dynamical evolution of our Galaxy.
Dr. Guy R. Davies
Data analysis, machine learning, observational asteroseismology.
Dr. Davies is an expert in the application of Bayesian techniques of analysis and machine learning tools to extract parameters from the pulsation spectra of solar-like oscillators and also has a particular interest in testing gyrochronology relations using asteroseismic data.
Dr. Davies is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham and he is interested in researching the nature of the Sun, stars that are a little bit like the Sun, and stars that are much more evolved than the Sun. He is interested in the evolution of stars and how the rotation, magnetism, and mass loss of stars evolve with time. Dr. Davies uses observations of the oscillations of the Sun and the stars to learn about stellar evolution and to characterise the fundamental properties of stars. The use of oscillations can be particularly valuable when studying stars that host extrasolar planets. Dr. Davies is also involved with the daily operations of the BiSON project, and he is an active member of the Kepler (NASA) Asteroseismic Science Consortium, and the COROT (CNES) team.
He is an enthusiastic teacher and communicator in all aspects of astrophysics and is regularly involved in organized public outreach events.
Federico Zuccarino
Data samplings, programming, data analysis.
He is Master of Science (Electrical Engineering, Boston University, and Astronomy and Astrophysics, Universidad Internacional de Valencia). His main research interests and specialization are new developments in techniques for accurate age determination of stars, with an emphasis on gyrochronology. He is also interested in conducting research that requires the use of statistical computing and machine learning for analyzing large amounts of astronomical data and producing functional scientific results.
COLLABORATIONS THOT
Dra. Elisa Delgado-Mena
Stellar chemical evolution, chemical clocks
Elisa Delgado Mena is an i-FCT researcher in Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA-CAUP, Portugal) and currently is part of the Executive Board of Directors of IA. Her main research interests are the derivation of stellar chemical abundances for solar-type stars, planet-host stars and M dwarfs, the search and characterization of exoplanets, stellar variability and atmospheres, and the chemical evolution of the Galaxy.
She is involved in several projects for the spectroscopic analysis of stars such as the Gaia-ESO survey. Moreover she participates in different working packages to characterize stars for the ESA future missions, PLATO 2.0 and ARIEL. She is a member of the NIRPS Science Team, a new NIR high resolution spectrograph to be installed in La Silla with the aim of finding rocky planets around M dwarfs.
Dr. Delgado Mena is a co-author of 69 refereed papers in major journals (9 as first author) with 2140 citations (H=25) and she has given 20 talks in conferences (since 2010) including 1 invited talk and 3 invited research seminars. From an observational point of view, she has more than 40 approved proposals (10 of them as PI) since 2009 in major telescopes and observatories: ESO La Silla and VLT (Chile), Roque de los Muchachos-La Palma (Spain), IRTF (Hawaii, USA) and Subaru (Hawaii, USA). She has also carried out several observational campaigns with different telescopes (IAC-80, FIES/NOT, HARPS/ESO3.6), especially on the search for planets around giant stars in open clusters. She has been a member of the reviewer’s panel for ESO proposals during periods 97 and 98 and acts as a referee for different journals (A&A, ApJ, MNRAS and Nature)
Dr. David Barrado
Stellar clusters, stellar dating techinques using Lithium
David Barrado is a senior researcher at the Spanish “Center for Astrobiology”, which depends on the “Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aerospacial” (INTA), the Spanish space agency, and the “Spanish High Research Council” (CSIC).He works at the European Science Astronomical Center (ESAC, which is part of the European Space Agency, near Madrid, in Spain). At INTA, where he has obtained the first Full Research Professor position, he has been Principal Investigator and National Project Manager for the Spanish collaboration within MIRI, the Mid-Infrared Instrument on board of the JWST. Previously, he has been director of the Spanish-German Center, and he has been a postdoc in the theoretical department of the “Universidad Autónoma de Madrid”, the “Max-Plank Institut für Astronomie” in Heidelberg (MPIA, Germany) and the “Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics” in Cambridge (USA), where he finished his Ph.D. dissertation, initiated at the “Universidad Complutense de Madrid”. He has held some of the most prestigious fellowships, such as Fulbright scientist, a NASA/NSF fellowship, and a contract by the “Ramón y Cajal” program.
His research topics focus on the search and characterization of the properties of substellar objects and properties of stars in open clusters. In particular, he has studied aspects such as the initial mass function, trying to extend the census well inside the substellar domain, he has carried out searches of ultra-cool dwarfs, censuses of accretion and protoplanetary disks, analysis of their properties, properties of young stars and the evolution with time (disks, rotation, lithium abundance, activity) and so on. From a more general perspective, he has specialized in stellar and planetary system formation, using different observational techniques: from optical to far infrared, imaging and spectroscopy, ground-based (Magellan, CAHA, WHT, TNG, Keck, Subaru, IRTF, UKIRT, La Silla, Las Campanas, KPNO, CTIO, CSO) and space-borne telescopes (ISO, Akari, Spitzer, Herschel, Kepler). All this observational effort has produced around 180 articles in well-known journals such A&A, ApJ, AJ, Nature, Science, and MNRAS, with a significant impact (H factor=53). He has published several books about science and history of science for the public.
Dr. Luisma Sarro
Big Data management and analysis, IA techniques
Dr. Luis Manuel Sarro. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Artificial Intelligence Dpt. of the UNED Computer Science Faculty. Dr. Sarro was the Director of the Advanced Artificial Intelligence Masters between 2010 and 2016. Currently, he is Vice-Director of the Intelligent Systems Doctoral Programme. Luis M. Sarro has been involved in the Knowledge Discovery Work Packages of several space missions including CoRoT and Gaia. He is currently the manager of the Global Variability Studies Gaia top-level WP. His group is one of the three participants in the Variability Classification WP. He also leads the Ultra Cool Dwarfs and Object Clustering Analysis WPs in Gaia.
Dr. Juan Carlos Suárez Yanes
A-F pulsating stars, stellar dating using delta Scuti large separations
PhD. and currently lecturer / senior researcher (“Ramón y Cajal” /MINECO) at University of Granada. Head of the Stellar Seismology Group at the Theoretical Physics and Cosmology Department of the Granada University. Main research lines: asteroseismology of intermediate-mass stars and stellar seismology-planetary dynamic relation. Lecturer in Physics in Grade and Master levels.
Dr. Antonio García Hernández
A-F pulsating stars, stellar dating using delta Scuti large separations
Dr. García Hernández experience and interest cover several topics related to stars, such as Stellar Interiors and Evolution, Stellar Modelling and Asteroseismology, both theoretical and observational. In the last years, he particularly focused my research in one of the most critical problems in stellar physics: rotation effects. To do that, I used the Asteroseismology, applying that technique to intermediate-mass, main-sequence stars.
Dr. García Hernández obtained his Ph. D. at the University of Granada in 2011 and started his first post-doc in 2012 with a Fellowship granted by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, from the Portuguese Minister). He worked at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Science (IA-UP) in Porto (Portugal). Since November 2016, he have been contracted as post-doctoral researcher by the University of Granada under the project “Contribución de la UGR a la mission especial PLATO2.0. Fases B2/C”.
In terms of scientific productivity, Dr. García Hernández CV counts with 30 publications with a total of 616 citations (19 refereed, 17 in journals of the first quartile, with 563 citations and 10 as first author with 102 citations). The impact factor H is 11 (January 2018, from ADS). He contributed to more than 15 national and international congresses and meetings. He have been referee for the Astrophysical Journal and the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal, part of the examining committee of a Ph. D. dissertation and several M. Sc. Dissertations, and supervisor of 3 M. Sc. Students. He is lecturer of the Valencian International University (VIU) of the topic “Stellar Astrophysics” of the official master degree “Astronomy and Astrophysics”.
Dr. García Hernández has been associated to several national and international projects, most of them focussed in space missions, such as CoRoT or PLATO, as well as other within the European FP7 (SpaceInn) o the H2020 project (HELAS IA, under evaluation), aimed to secure optimal use of the existing and planned data, from space and from the ground, in helio- and asteroseismology. He is part of several research groups, focussed in the asteroseismic analysis of data from space mission. He is part of the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium (KASC), the TASC (for the TESS upcoming mission), SoFAR research group and key personnel of one Working Packages (WP 120 130) for the preparation of the PLATO2.0 European mission. Additionally, He is member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
He has participated on several outreach activities, such as public talks, international astronomy events (like the International Year of Astronomy, IYA2009) and in special events, such as the “Pavellón del Sol”, an itinerant exposition.