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 space telescope (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]