Exoplaents are planets outside our solar system.
Exoplanet research is at the forefront of our current effort to understand one of the most fundamental questions, are we alone? in what way, if at all, the solar system is special?
The recent information explosion about exoplanets came from the visionary Radial velocity surveys (and the tremendous technological breakthroughs that they required) and the Kepler mission, finding thousands of exoplanets using the transit method.
In my group, we aim to develop several tools that can push exoplanet research to the next level.
1) Precise time-series analysis for transiting planets - Capitalizing on tools we have developed for gravitational wave analysis, we aim to enhance the sensitivity of the Kepler data to long-period planets
2) Develop methods for high contrast imaging, with the dream of one day "imaging" an Exoplanet using the light it reflects from it's host star
3)Extremely precise ground based photometry (using LAST, together with Prof. Eran Ofek)
4) Precision Radial Velocity (together with Dr. Sahar Shahaf and Dr. Sagi Ben-Ami)