Hello 👋

I'm Ed, a PhD student at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. I'm interested primarily in exoplanets and the search for alien life. I have secondary interests in planet formation, statistics, and AI — particularly interpretability and safety.

Background

I was born and grew up in London and did my integrated masters in Astrophysics at Cambridge. I briefly dipped into finance with an internship at Jane Street, but returned to research, focusing on planet formation in my masters project and research internship. During these, I developed a proof-of-concept method to detect the spirals driven by baby planets as they grow from the dust of their natal discs.

I've now moved on to full-grown planets, particularly focusing on the atmospheres of sub-Neptunes — exoplanets between the size of Earth and Neptune. These are the only class of exoplanets that both: have atmospheres that we can currently analyse effectively (only since JWST!) and have some chance of hosting alien life. Since atmospheric signatures are our most promising tool for detecting such life, these planets represent (in many eyes) our best chance of finding it, at least until we can analyse the atmospheres of Earth-like planets (which is still a while away). Specifically, I am currently working on 3D numerical models of Hycean atmospheres — sort of like a Hycean meteorologist.