Dashboard – I'm a Scientist 2024/25

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About Me:

I live and work in Leeds. I am an astrophysicist who enjoys reading a good book or playing boardgames with friends.
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I have always been interested in space and our place in the Universe, and am always happy to chat astronomy and astrophysics.
My pronouns are:

he/him
My Work:

I study the climates (weather) of planets outside of our solar system using the same models that predict the weather on Earth.
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Thanks to space telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we are learning more and more about worlds outside our solar system. I use climate (i.e weather) models to try to understand the planets that we are seeing, investigating how similar, and different, they are to the Earth.
My Typical Day:

I wake up early in the morning before taking the bus to work, starting at 8:30am. Then I spend the day either teaching students, running models on the supercomputer (essentially 100’s of computers working together), or catching up with colleagues work. I finish at 4:30pm.
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Most of my work takes place on my computer, either planning and running climate models on a supercomputer, or looking and my results to see whats interesting, and what I need to look at in more detail.
What I'd do with the prize money:

I would expand our demo designed to give students a ‘hands-on’ experience with the detection of planets outside our solar-system.

Education:

When i was younger, I went to Great Walstead School followed by Worth School. Then, I went to the University of Exeter for both my undergraduate degree and to complete my PhD.
Qualifications:

I have 11.5 GCSES, and did 4 A-levels: Maths, Further Maths, Physics, and Chemistry.

Next, I went to the University of Exeter and complete a 4-years combined Masters Degree in “Physics with Astrophysics” as well as a PhD in “Computational Astrophysics” (i.e. using computer models to investigate the universe around us).
Work History:

After completing my PhD, I moved to France to work as a researcher at CEA, the Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission of the French Government. Here I worked in the fundamental research department, developing models which would be used to study the universe around us.

After four years in France, I moved to Leeds.
Current Job:

Currently I am a researcher at the University of Leeds, studying what can effect the habitability of worlds around distant stars, including if comets can deliver water, leading to the potential formation of oceans on Earth-like planets.
Employer:

I current work for the University of Leeds

Felix Sainsbury-Martinez