Manuel Perger
ICE
Research Interests
Manuels research interests are focussed on the current frontiers in the search for life outside our Solar System. This is the detection and characterization of exoplanets using high-resolution Doppler spectroscopy from instruments like HIRES, HARPS, HARPS-N, CARMENES, and ESPRESSO, and ground- and space-based photometry from instruments like TESS, or the JWST. In recent years, it also includes the analysis of the atmospheres of already known, small, rocky, and possibly habitable exoplanets and the understanding of the so-called biomarkers. All those efforts are very much dependent on the understanding of the host stars of the planetary systems, and especially the contribution of stellar magnetic activity to all exoplanet observables. It is therefore of pivotal importance and one of Manuels main research activities in the last years, to model the observables using state-of-the-art codes like STARSIM, and to mitigate the stellar effects by applying modern machine learning techniques in the form of Gaussian Processes and Neural Networks.
Courses