The most recent Group Photo is here.
Current Group Members
Jonathan Tennyson
Jonathan is founder and principal investigator of the ExoMol projects. He has been at UCL since 1985 as "New Blood" Lecturer and by 2011 was Head of Department. In the interim period his group started computing molecular line lists at the rate of about one every 3 years. In 2011 he stepped down from Head of Department to lead the ExoMol project.
Sergey Yurchenko
Sergey is manager of the ExoMol project. He is a developer of the polyatomic general variational code TROVE and diatomic program Duo. Sergey is a senior lecturer at Physics and Astronomy UCL currently teaching Mathematical Methods to undegraduates.
Christian Hill
email | www | @scipython3
Christian has been a member of the ExoMol group since 2010 and has been involved in the creation of several line lists. He also wrote and maintains this website.
Laura McKemmish
email | www | @laura_mckemmish
From September 2014 – June 2016, she worked on theoretical calculations of the full rovibronic spectroscopy of transition metal diatomics like TiO and VO; these molecules are of high interest to astronomers as they are dominant absorbers of visible light in cool stars and hot Jupiter exoplanets.
Barry Mant
Barry did his undergraduate degree in chemistry at The University of Aberdeen. He then went on to do a PhD with Dr Mark Law with the title, "Antimatter Chemistry". Barry joined the ExoMol project in 2016. His research is in investigating and applying methods of calculating line lists for hydrocarbon molecules.
Oleg Polyansky
Katy Chubb
Katy has been a PhD student with the ExoMol group since September 2014. She has a background in astrophysics where she gained an interest in quantum mechanics. She is working towards a hot linelist for acetylene for use in characterising exoplanet and cool star atmospheres and is interested in the singularities relating to linear molecules. She is also currently working with the Twinkle team on the ORBYTS project and the Mayors Fund for London Astronomy Club.
Ahmed Al-Refaie
Emil Żak
Emil is a PhD student supervised by Jonathan Tennyson. His project aims in computation of highly accurate ro-vibrational line lists for isotopologues of carbon dioxide. These may serve as theoretical reference model for precise measurements of atmospheric concentration of this greenhouse gas. His research interests range from nuclear motion theory of electronic excited states, through quantum electrodynamics of ultra-cold molecules, to fundamental concepts as the geometric phase in Quantum Mechanics.
Phillip Coles
Tom Rivlin
email | www | @tomrivlin
Tom is a PhD student working under Jonathan Tennyson. He graduated in 2015 from Imperial College with an MSci in Physics with Theoretical Physics. Currently, he is writing code to simulate heavy particle scattering using the R-Matrix methodology. In 2014 he did a summer project with the ExoMol group, generating the full rovibronic spectrum of Sodium Hydride, NaH.Alec Owens
Former Group Members
Andrey Yachmenev
Andrey was a postdoc with the ExoMol group since April 2013. His background is in molecular physics, theoretical chemistry and spectroscopy. His role in the ExoMol project has been to develop the variational methodology employed in the computer program TROVE to improve the computational performance in applications to polyatomic molecules, beyond four-atomics, and for calculations of high-energy spectra.
He has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship in 2014 for the project RichMol, aimed at the development of new theoretical and computational methods for comprehensive modelling of the rovibrational dynamics of polyatomic molecules in the presence of external electric (laser) fields.
He is currently a theory team leader in the experimental group of Jochen Kuepper at Center for Free-Electron laser Science at DESY
Clara Sousa-Silva
email | www | @clara__ss
Clara is a molecular astrophysicist at UCL and a science teacher as part of the Researchers in Schools (RIS) initiative. For her her PhD, Clara simulated the spectra of the phosphine molecule so it could be detected on alien atmospheres. Alongside her research where she searches for new habitable planets, Clara works as an advocate for encouraging more girls into STEM fields. With the support of Goldman Sachs, RIS and UCL, she is responsible for the educational programme for the Twinkle space mission, EduTwinkle. Most recently, Clara has set up ORBYTS (Original Research By Young Twinkle Students). She has spoken, taught and researched at many institutions including the Josef Stephan’s Institute, the ULO Observatory, Downing St, Edinburgh University and MIT.
Lorenzo Lodi
Emma Barton
Emma is a third year PhD student. Her work includes calculation of diatomic line lists (SiO, NaCl, KCl and contribution to CS), analysis of FTIR absorption spectra (NH3, CH4) and computation of pressure broadened cross-sections from the ExoMol line lists. The cross-sections are intended for implementation in Tau-REx, a new spectral retrieval code from the Exoplanet group at UCL.
Daniel Underwood
Maire Gorman
email | www | @MaireNeilsonG
Maire started her PhD in the ExoMol group in October 2012 in which she calculated linelists for the diatomic hydrides of CrH and MnH. During her time in London she tutored for The Brilliant Club in East London and worked as a PostGraduate Teaching Assistant in the department and at ULO. She is now a permanent Teaching Fellow at Aberystwyth University, Wales.