About Me

I am a first year PhD student working with Sebastian Marino and Sasha Hinkley in the Departement of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Exeter. My PhD consists in explaining and understanding the different morphology seen in debris discs by testing the different planet-disc interaction theories, and evaluating the role of planets in the truncation of discs. These discoveries will ultimately also test different debris disc and planet formation theories.

Education:
PhD of Physics & Astronomy at University of Exeter, UK
MSc by Research in Physics at University of Warwick, UK
BSc in Physics at University of Warwick, UK
BSc Year Abroad: Physics at University of Waterloo, ON, Canada

Research Interests:
Debris disc morphology
Exoplanet detection with direct imaging
Planet-disc interactions
Planet/debris disc formation
Exocomet transit detection

Teaching:
PHY1027 - First Year Labs: Exoplanet Transit lab demonstrator
NSC1002 - Computing Lab Demonstrating: Python workshop

Other Interests:
Other than my interest in Astronomy, I have been playing basketball competitively for a large percentage of my life in national/county/university leagues. From 2017 to 2022, I have been involved in the Warwick Basketball Club, taking different positions as the years go by (Charity Officer 2018-2019, Men's Teams Captain 2020-2021, Advisor to the Executive Commitee 2021-2022). I was also a Warwick Sport Activator, encouraging other students to be more active, by running casual, inclusive and beginner friendly basketball sessions.
My growing experience in data manipulation has strengthened my interest in sport data science, especially linked to basketball. On the side, I am familiarising myself with new analytic tools more specialised towards sports analytics (Coursera course if interested). Some of my personal side projects include trying to predict the winning team of future basketball seasons according to old data, or predicting future MVP/ROY according to archival data.

Research

Direct Imaging of planets around three gapped debris disc systems: HD107146, HD92945, HD206893
Project supervisor: Sebastian Marino

We aim to study the architecture of three debris disc systems: HD107146, HD92945, HD206893, that have previous detections of resolved discs with ALMA (Marino et al. 2018, 2019, 2020). These debris discs are, so far, the only debris discs to show a gapped structure. These gaps can be interpreted as signs of planet-disc interactions where Neptune-like planets could be causing such observed annular gaps. With JWST MIRI F1140C data (GO1668), we aim to detect these gap carving planets and when combined with the disc structure information, we aim to constrain both the architecture and dynamical history of these systems.

An Automated Search for Spectroscopic Exocomet Transits (paper submitted)
Project supervisor: Grant Kennedy, Paul Strøm, David Brown

As part of my Masters, we developed an automated pipeline that searches for signs of exocomet transits in spectroscopy data. Being guided by the multiple exocomet transits detected around the archetypal star Beta Pictoris, exocomets can be identified by transient absorption features in specific atomic species, such as the commonly used ionised Calcium doublet. The aim of this project is to overcome the typical bias towards sample of stars with detected debris discs, and use the entire HARPS archive to build a large and more diverse sample of stars. The ultimate goal is to evaluate the occurrence rate of exocomet transits and possibly determine any trends in host stars. Bendahan-West et al. submitted.

Self-Organising Map (Summer project)
Project supervisor: Grant Kennedy, Paul Strøm, David Brown
This summer project introduced me to an unsupervised Machine Learning classification algorithm called a Self-Organising Map (SOM) that we used to classify stellar spectra according to their different spectral profiles. This was an attempt to reduce the number of false positive detections in our search for exocomet transits. The main idea is that stars showing similar features (e.g. variable stellar activity), would be classified together, providing an easier method to identify and filter specific sources of false positive exocomet detections.

Talks & Conferences

ESPF seminar - STScI, Baltimore, USA, Dec 2022 [invited speaker] link to recorded talk
Debris Disc group - IoA, Cambridge, UK, Nov 2022 [invited speaker]
Debris Discs: At Home and Abroad - Jena, Germany, Aug 2022 [talk]
National Astronomy Meeting - University of Warwick, UK, Jul 2022 [participation]
Midlands Disc Meeting - University of Warwick, UK, Apr 2022 [talk]
Undergraduate Research Support Scheme - Warwick, UK, Dec 2021 [poster]
FIDLE: Formation Introduction au Deep Learning - CNRS, FR, 2021 [virtual workshop]

Contact

Feel free to email me, I am more than happy to discuss about my work!

Email: rb941@exeter.ac.uk

Address:
Physics Building, Streatham Campus,
University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter EX4 4QL, UK