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Lorenzo Mugnai

Dr Lorenzo Mugnai

(he/him)

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Astronomy Instrumentation Group
Cardiff Hub for Astrophysics Research and Technology

School of Physics and Astronomy

Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

I am involved in the development of missions and observatories for the characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres. I am highly involved in the development of the ESA Ariel space mission and the NASA EXCITE mission. 
I am also pioneering some exoplanetary populations studies with strong collaboration with national and international institutions, such as UCL, JPL, NAOJ"Sapienza" University of Rome, INAF, etc. 
My activities also involve outreach, as I lead projects aimed at high school students and citizen scientists programs to involve amateur astronomers.

Publication

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

Articles

Conferences

Other

Research

My main research interests are in the field of exoplanet characterization. Since exoplanets are difficult to study with our current technology, I focus my efforts on developing new numerical methods for data analysis and tool optimization. Over the years I have gained experience in the development and use of various tools and techniques, including atmospheric retrievals, end-to-end instrument simulators, instrument calibration, and data-detrending pipelines.

Exoplanetary missions

  •  ARIEL - Working Groups coordinator. Development and maintenance of the simulation tools and data reduction pipeline. Mission performance simulation and data analysis. 
  • EXCITE - mission performance and data analysis

Planetary populations

In the last decade, the number of known exoplanets has increased tenfold: at the end of 2009, there were about 400 known exoplanets, while at the end of 2019, confirmed discoveries reached more than 4000. This number is still increasing, thanks to space and ground-based missions, and with that, our understanding of exoplanets is changing. I started developing statistical tools to characterize and classify not just individual planets, but entire populations.

Developed software

Numerical simulators are fundamental tools for the design and optimization of missions and instruments. I am and I've been involved in the development of different simulators, some of which are now publicly available:

  • 2024 – taurex-emcee (ideator, developing team member). A plugin for TauREx 3.1 that provides the
    Emcee sampler by Dan Foreman-Mackey & contributors for the retrieval. Publicly available on PyPI,
    GitHub.
  • 2023 – PAOS (developing team member). PAOS, the Physical Optics Simulator, is a fast, modern, and
    reliable Python package for Physical Optics studies. In use by the Ariel Space Mission (ESA). Publicly
    available on PyPI, and GitHub.
  • 2022 – ExoSim 2.0 (sole developer). The new time-domain simulator for exoplanet observatories. Used by the Ariel Space Mission (ESA) and the EXCITE mission (NASA). Publicly available on PyPI and GitHub.
  • 2021 – ExoRad (sole developer). The generic radiometric simulator: it is a generalized and optimized version of ArielRad, now in use by the Ariel Space Mission (ESA), EXCITE mission (NASA), Twinkle (BSSL), and Mauve (BSSL). Publicly available on PyPI, GitHub, ASCL.net, and Zenodo. More than 29k downloads.
  • 2021 – Rapoc (sole developer). Rapoc uses molecular absorption measurements (i.e. wavelength-dependent opacities) to calculate Rosseland and Planck's mean opacities that are commonly used in atmospheric modeling. Publicly available on PyPI and on GitHub. See also EMAC and ASCL.net. More than 6k downloads.
  • 2021 – Alfnoor (main developer). The thousand-light Ariel observation simulator: a wrapper of ArielRad/ExoRad and TauREx3 to produce simulated observed spectra of entire planetary populations. Source code on restricted access.
  • 2019 – ArielRad (main developer). The Ariel radiometric simulator: a code that estimates the payload performance in observing a target, breaking down the noise into its components. Online version available on ExoDB for the Ariel Consortium members. Source code on restricted access.

Biography

Education

  • 2018 - 2021: PhD in Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Science at "Sapienza" University of Rome
  • 2015 - 2017: M.Sc. in Astronomy and Astrophysics (summa cum laude) at "Sapienza" University of Rome
  • 2008 - 2014: B.Sc. in Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Florence

Honours and awards

  • 2024 - present: Visiting Researcher at NASA-JPL
  • 2023 - present: Honorary Research Fellow at University College London (UCL)
  • 2022 - present: Research Associate at INAF-OAPa

Professional memberships

  • 2022 – present: Guest member of the Exoplanet Discovery Group at JPL
  • 2020 – present:  Member of the EXCITE Team
  • 2018 – present: Member of the Ariel Consortium

Academic positions

  • 2021 –2023: Research Fellow at "Sapienza" University of Rome

Speaking engagements

  • 2021 – 2023: Co-Founder of ShotAstronomico – Outreach in Italian schools supported by Regione Lazio
  • 2019 – present: National contact person for ExoClock – citizen scientists project to monitor the ephemerides of transiting exoplanets 

Invited interviews

  • June 2021 EOS magazine: “The Possible Evolution of an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere”
  • May 2021 Le Scienze (Italian ed. of Scientific America) magazine: “Lo strano caso dell’Esopianeta Roccioso GJ1132b”
  • Apr. 2021 WIRED magazine: “Did this scorching-hot planet lose - and regain - an atmosphere?”

Committees and reviewing

Reviewer for ApJ, ExpAstron, PASP and JOSS

Contact Details

Email MugnaiL@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone +44 29 2251 4477
Campuses Queen's Buildings - North Building, Floor 3, Room 3.22, 5 The Parade, Newport Road, Cardiff, CF24 3AA

Research themes

Specialisms

  • Exoplanets
  • Astronomical instrumentation

External profiles