I am Jamie, a second-year PhD student in the Astronomy and Astrophysics group at the University of Warwick, supervised by Boris Gänsicke. My work is focused on polluted white dwarfs, and what they can tell us about the bulk composition of exoplanets.

Research

I have created and will maintain a polluted white dwarf database, containing information on ~1500 white dwarf planetary systems. With this database, I have been investigating the trends of these systems and what they can tell us about planets, as well as identifying observational biases. Once published, this database will be available for everyone to use.

By fitting atmosphere models to ultraviolet and optical spectra, I am determining the number abundance of four DAZ white dwarfs and one DABZ white dwarf and will interpret these abundances to find what they can tell us about the nature of the polluting material.

Conferences

Towards Other Earths III, July 2023 - Porto, Portugal: "Inferring planet compositions from polluted white dwarfs" (Poster)

UKExoM 2023, August 2023 - London, United Kingdom: "Inferring planet compositions from polluted white dwarfs" (Poster)

Rocky Worlds III, January 2024 - Zürich, Switzerland: "Inferring exoplanet compositions using a polluted white dwarf database" (Talk)

EDI & Teaching

• Demonstrator for first year undergraduate Physics Laboratory (PX152-30 Physics Laboratory)Link opens in a new window.
• Contributed a talk for the Warwick Equitea Group: "The Impact of Having a Stutter in Academia".
• Previous Warwick white dwarf meeting organiser (2023, Warwick white dwarf group).