Exoplanets and the Ariel Mission - Searching for signatures of life on strange worlds

Giovanna Tinetti is a Professor of Astrophysics and Head of the Astrophysics Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCL, and Director of the UCL Centre for Space Exochemistry Data at Harwell in Oxford.  She is the Principal Investigator of the ESA Ariel Space Mission, dedicated to undertaking a comprehensive spectral survey of exoplanets in a wide variety of environments. Ariel will be launched in 2029. She is also co-founder and co-director of Blue Skies Space Ltd, which aims at creating new opportunities for science space satellites.

After a PhD in Theoretical Physics, Giovanna worked at Caltech, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and at La Sapienza University of Rome (Fermi Chair). She has authored / co-authored over 250 research publications and has delivered over 300 talks, seminars and public lectures internationally. Select awards include Sir Arthur Clarke Award (2023), Monte-Carlo Prize Women in Science (2022) and Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2020).

Andrew Rushby is a Lecturer in Astrobiology at Birkbeck. Andrew’s interest in the climates of newly discovered exoplanets, particularly small and rocky worlds, started during graduate studies at the University of East Anglia, which was followed by postdoctoral fellowships at NASA Ames Research Center and the University of California, Irvine.

Andrew's research at Birkbeck concerns the habitability of small planets outside of our Solar System. He has developed a new postgraduate degree in Astrobiology, which is one of the first of its kind in the UK. Andrew is also a passionate science communicator. He co-hosts the Exocast podcast, which discusses all things related to exoplanetary science and astrobiology.

Alexandra (Alex) Thompson is a final year PhD student in the UCL Physics & Astronomy department studying exoplanets and their host stars. Her research focuses on understanding the activity of these host stars and correcting exoplanetary observations for contaminating signals that result from this stellar activity. Her pathway into academia has been an unusual one, starting from a part-time undergraduate degree in Planetary Science at Birkbeck whilst also working as a tattoo artist before focusing her attention fully on scientific research and completing her MSc in Planetary Science at UCL.

Being very open about having a chronic illness herself, she is also very passionate about EDI and engaging groups that have historically been under-served by STEM outreach. This year she pioneered the Orbyts STAR project in partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital where the hospital school students conducted stellar variability monitoring of some of the most notoriously active exoplanet host stars that we plan to observe with Ariel. Outside of research she loves everything climbing and mountain-related.

Gordon Yip is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCL. He is also a member of the Ariel Space Mission, where he is coordinator of the Machine Learning Working Group. His research focuses on applying Machine Learning and Deep Learning techniques to help better understand exoplanets, and in particular their atmospheres.

Gordon also leads the Ariel Data Challenge, an annual event that engages with the broader machine learning community to help address technical and scientific challenges encountered by the ESA exoplanet space mission.

Catherine Regan is a postdoctoral researcher in planetary science in the Plasma and Space Physics group of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University. Coming from a geophysics and plasma physics background, her research interests include the coupling between planetary environments from the surface and atmosphere, up to the ionosphere and magnetosphere, particularly at Mars, utilising data from NASA's MAVEN mission.

Catherine completed her PhD at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL in 2024 where she researched the impact of dust storms on the induced magnetosphere of Mars. During this time, Catherine was heavily involved in public engagement and science communication, chairing a number of working groups and running her own project, Eyes on Mars, inspired by the PanCam instrument on the upcoming Rosalind Franklin Rover. Her outreach work has been recognized by multiple awards. She was recently awarded the IoP Jocelyn Bell Burnell medal for exceptional early-career contributions to physics by a female physicist.