Internal Newsletter
Searching with new eyes
In research, searching with new eyes is important if not crucial. Opening his mind, exploring new paths, testing new approaches, scrutinizing differently, and changing the way we think, are always beneficial for new discoveries. Some articles in this INSIDERS volume illustrate this. The CoRoT mission, that opened the path to the discovery of transiting planets […]
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NGTS eyes start finding new planets
The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) project is dedicated to finding Neptune sized transiting exoplanets around bright southern hemisphere host stars. It builds on over a decade of experience from the WASP project – the most successful ground based survey for transiting planets. NGTS is the most precise ground-based transit survey currently operating; capable of monitoring […]
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Michel Mayor, the new galactic guru
April the 7th of 2017 will remain as a special day for Michel Mayor. Indeed, he found himself alone on the stage of the Reykjavik Opera House, not to interpret an air of Verdi but to give a conference on exoplanets. He, who is more used to the crowds of researchers or astronomy enthusiasts, was this […]
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Preparing the Site Visit
On 8 and 9 June 2017, the international review panel will visit PlanetS at the University of Bern. Besides a summary of the past achievements, the NCCR will present its visions for the next phase that should start in June 2018. A new site visit is on the horizon! After Geneva Observatory last year, this […]
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Swiss Company Maker
Around twenty future entrepreneurs had been selected by the SwissCompanyMaker to participate in a workshop (supported partly by NCCR PlanetS) on the possibility of turning an idea into viable businesses. Assisted by professional coaches, they spent two days trying to identify and overcome the obstacles on the road to success. “Are you an entrepreneur? “”Why […]
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Work-life balance in academia
The PlanetS Academic Platform carried out a survey with PlanetS professors and senior scientists to find out their point of view when it comes to ‘work-life balance in academia’ and what it means to them. By Nadine Afram The survey questions were based on work-life balance and time management articles and on feedback from a […]
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Female birds sing, too
In the last edition of the InsiderS, I wrote about some surprising insights concerning the gender dimension in academic research (http://nccr-planets.ch/heartbreaking-disregard-female-perspective/). This is the last article in this series and deals with gender in research projects, as discussed during a gender conference (http://nccr-planets.ch/gender-bias-erc-grant-evaluation/) – it would be interesting to see how and where this could […]
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Workshop on exoplanet densities
About 40 PlanetS members and associates met on 3 May 2017 to discuss topics related to exoplanet densities in a workshop at the University of Bern. «It was a day to get inspired,» summarizes Caroline Dorn who organised the event together with François Bouchy. How confident are we with the determined masses and radii from […]
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Workshop on Planets in Binaries
A workshop on planets in binary stars was organized on Monday 27th of March 2017 in Berne. The organizers were composed of 4 members or associates of the NCCR PlanetS, Sebastian Daemgen (ETHZ), David Martin (UNIGE), Stéphane Udry (UNIGE) and Natacha Brügger (UNIBE). The main goal of the workshop was to reunite all the scientists […]
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From sand castles to cool freaks
In the three communication workshops at the PlanetS general assembly researchers discussed in groups about possible media releases and presented very creative summaries. Most of the proposed stories will be realized and published in the next weeks or months either as press releases, PlanetS news or articles in our external newsletter “The Observer”. «Tiny star», […]
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