Suzanne Aigrain

Aigrain grew up in Toulouse, France, and was educated at the Lycée Pierre-de-Fermat.[1] She studied physics at Imperial College London and graduated in 2000.[2] During her undergraduate studies she was an intern at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. She spent sixth months at the European Space Agency[4] before joining the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge for her doctoral studies, earning a PhD in 2005[2][5] for work on planetary transits and stellar variability.[5]

Aigrain was a postdoctoral research associate in the Institute of Astronomy from 2004.[2] In 2007 Aigrain joined the University of Exeter as a lecturer.[2][6][7] She was appointed a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford in 2010.[2][8] She leads the Stars & Planets group at Oxford Astrophysics, studying exoplanets and their stars.[9] She uses the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Telescope and CoRoT satellite.[10] In 2011 she hosted a meeting with the Institute of Physics and Royal Astronomical Society to discuss recent discoveries in exoplanets, attended by Giovanna Tinetti and Jocelyn Bell Burnell.[11]

She has expressed her concerns about the detection of planets using the radial velocity method to detect exoplanets; such as instrumental precision, stellar activity, patchy observations and limitations of other models.[12] She was part of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) discovery of the Earth sized planet close to Alpha Centauri Bb,[13] but played an even closer role in the study that disproved the planet's existence in 2016.[14]

Aigrain and her group use Bayesian inference to correct for instrumental systematics while robustly preserving real astrophysical signals. She has played a leading role in the Kepler (K2) mission, correcting for its systematic noise and discovering many transiting planets.[15] Aigrain has studied hot Jupiters and other Jupiter-like planets.[16] She has looked at the potential to use transit surveys to study stellar clusters.[17] Her research has been funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).[18]

In 2019 Algrain was awarded a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to study exoplanets.[19]

Aigrain is interested in public engagement and regularly delivers popular science lectures.[10][20][21][22] She spoke about exoplanets on In Our Time in 2013.,[23] and has taken part in Pint of Science.[24] In 2018 she spoke at the Oxford Playhouse, accompanying the play One Small Step.[25] In November 2018 she was part of the Kings Place Bach, the Universe and Everything performance.[26] She is a member of the International Astronomical Union.[27] She writes non-fiction with Philippe Aigrain, as well as writing her own poetry.[28][29][30]