Please give us a personal quote or a quote of a famous person (e.g. of Albert Einstein) that describes you and your life/work.
“I think nature’s imagination is so much greater than man’s, she’s never going to let us relax”  Richard P. Feynman

Please describe your job in only one sentence and tell us what the most important goal of this work is.
We are searching for exoplanets in the Super-Earth to Neptune mass/radius range that transit bright stars.  Our goal is to find and characterise these exoplanets so we can learn more about how they form, migrate and evolve.

How did you get into this research/work field?
I undertook a research project modelling the reflected light curves of giant exoplanets in eccentric orbits.  This got me interested in exoplanets, and I then started a PhD related to transiting exoplanets.  At that time there were less then 10 transiting exoplanets known.  There are now over 1000!

What would be the greatest discovery you would like to see in your life time?
Life on other planets or other-life (non DNA/RNA) on our planet.

You work for the NCCR PlanetS. What do you think will the NCCR enable you to do you couldn’t do without it?
NCCR provides an environment with experts from all the different sub-displines that study planets and exoplanets.  This will allow me to put my research into a broader context and apply the findings of my research to other sub-displines.  In particular as we continue to discover and characterise a wider range of exoplanet systems we will be able to apply our findings to theories of planet formation and migration being delevoped by others within the NCCR.