My research focuses on better understanding planetary system architectures, using an observational perspective.

My main questions of interests are:

• What is the diversity of planetary system architectures? What does it tell us about planet formation and evolution? How can we relate it to the origin of our Solar System?
• How do the morphologies of debris disks constrain the underlying planet population?
• Are we alone in the Universe?

I have been working on young (a few million years old) to mature (> 1 Gyr) planetary systems located close to the Sun (<150 pc) systems. At a few millions years old, A Sun-like star is still likely surrounded by its protoplanetary disk, considered as the birth places of exoplanets. After, the gas in the system vanishes and around 10-50 Myr some putative exoplanets and debris disks emit still enough light in the near infrared to be directly imaged. At a few giga years old, current direct imaging observations have poor sensitivity because the current facilities are mainly sensitive to the thermal emission of exoplanets, and not their reflected light. Thus, around old stars, direct imaging detect mainly companions close to the regime of brown dwarfs to date. This is changing with the MIRI instrument on the JWST, by accessing the mid-infrared wavelengths coupled to the highest sensitivity of space telescopes, and in future with high-contrast imagers on the Roman Nancy Grace Space Telescope (launching in 2027) and the Extremely Large Telescope (first instrument light expected on 2030).

Since November 14, 2024, I have been a Fellow at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. I have observational duties on the Unit Telescope 3 of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) located in the Atacama desert. In particular, I am the Fellow instrument scientist of the extreme adaptive optics instrument SPHERE. I am part of the SPHERE, SPHERE+ and SHARK-NIR consortia.

Previously, I carried out my Ph.D. at the University Grenoble Alpes in France, half-time at the Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysiques de Grenoble, and half-time at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. My Ph.D. aimed to better understand planet formation by peering into the architecture of planetary systems. In practice, I characterized known exoplanets (orbital motion, spectral emission) and dust belts (morphological parameters of the belt, dust properties), and looked for additional exoplanets. I mainly used the SPHERE instrument, coupled to other astronomical facilities (ESO 3.6/HARPS, HST/STIS, ALMA, Gaia, Hipparcos, SHARK-NIR, LMIRCam).

To see details of my work, please go to the Home section and click on any image.