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Cavendish Astrophysics

 
Exoplanets

Biography

    I am an astrophysicist hunting for new exoplanets. Since 2018, I am a Torres Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where I work closely with the team of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Whenever I am not searching for new worlds, I enjoy travelling, the outdoors (scuba diving, rock climbing and hiking), and exploring our own Earth.

    My PhD was obtained at the University of Cambridge, UK, where I worked in Professor Didier Queloz's group at the Exoplanet Research Centre.  My research was focused on how we can distinguish between real exoplanets and stuff that looks like exoplanets, but is not ("false positives"). I worked with the Next Generation Transit Survey, a ground-based array of telescopes on the hunt for Neptune-sized exoplanets.

Research

Habitability & Origin of life
Transiting Exoplanets
Eclipsing Binaries
Bayesian Statistics
Machine Learning
Big Data

Publications

Key publications: 
  • Günther, M.N. et al., 2018, Unmasking the hidden NGTS-3Ab: a hot Jupiter in an unresolved binary system , MNRAS, 478 (4): 4720–4737
  • Günther, M.N. et al., 2017b, Centroid vetting of transiting planet candidates from the Next Generation Transit Survey, MNRAS, 472 (1): 295-307
  • Günther, M.N. et al., 2017a, A New Yield Simulator for Transiting Planets and False Positives: Application to the Next Generation Transit Survey, MNRAS, 465 (3): 3379-3389
  • Günther, M.N. et al., 2016, Quantifying and predicting Drosophila larvae crawling phenotypes, Nature Scientific Reports, 6: 27972
Other publications: 
Now: Torres Fellow at MIT
Previously: PhD Student at Cavendish Astrophysics Group
 Maximilian N. Günther

Contact Details

Email address: 
Room F07
Battcock Centre for Experimental Astrophysics,
Cavendish Laboratory,
JJ Thomson Avenue
Cambridge
CB3 0HE
+44 (0)1223 337364
Not available for consultancy

Affiliations