Vincent Van Eylen

I am a Belgian astronomer and Associate Professor in Exoplanets at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London. Before joining UCL I was a Henry Norris Russell Fellow at Princeton University and a Jan Hendrik Oort Fellow at the Sterrewacht at Leiden University in The Netherlands.

I received a PhD in Physics from Aarhus University in Denmark, where I worked at the Stellar Astrophysics Centre. My thesis advisors were Prof. Simon Albrecht and Prof. Hans Kjeldsen. I was a visiting graduate student at MIT where I worked with Prof. Josh Winn.

I hold a master degree in astrophysics and a bachelor degree in physics (with a minor in mathematics) from the University of Leuven, Belgium. I was president of student organization Wina and have been a student representative active in various university boards. Before starting my doctoral studies, I did an internship as a project engineer at the dredging company DEME in Doha, Qatar.

My research team has featured in national and international media and I have been a guest on BBC radio in the UK and NOS radio in the Netherlands. Media inquiries are welcome by email.

• Investigated the formation of sub-Neptune and super-Earth planets, where the latter have lost their atmospheres and are remnant cores of the prior. They are separated by a gap in the radius distribution of small planets, which we measured as a function of orbital period.


• Investigated the architecture of systems with small planets, to reveal how these systems form and planets interact – through orbital eccentricities and alignments between stars and planets. We have found that systems with multiple small transiting planets typically have near-circular orbits, whereas systems with a single transiting planet have higher orbital eccentricities.


• Led the discovery and characterization of nine new exoplanets using space photometry from e.g. the NASA Kepler, K2 and Spitzer satellites, as well as ground-based state-of-the-art radial velocity instruments. As part of the international KESPRINT collaboration, I have co-authored the discovery and characterization of dozens of additional exoplanets.

Vincent Van Eylen

Associate Professor
Exoplanet Science

Ed Bryant

Postoctoral research fellow
Planet occurrence across different types of stars

Ross Dobson

PhD researcher (with CDT data-intensive science)
Unveiling the exoplanet population
with novel data science techniques

Hannah Osborne

PhD researcher
Investigating exoplanet architecture
through radial velocity observations

Larissa Palethorpe

PhD researcher (at University of Edinburgh)
(as co-advisor, with Prof. Ken Rice)
Characterising small exoplanets

Marina Ventikos

PhD researcher
Understanding exoplanets and their host stars
using large data sets and AI

Francesca Waines

PhD researcher
Linking exoplanet detection to formation:
population synthesis

Angharad Weeks

PhD researcher
Characterisation of exoplanet host stars
using Gaia and asteroseismology

Majdi Assaid

MSc Space Science & Engineering

Alina Bashkirova

MSc Space Science & Engineering

Former members

• Cynthia Ho (PhD 2024, now postdoctoral research associate at Queen Mary University)
• Lawrence Berry (MSc in Astrophysics 2024)
• Ximing Xu (MSc in Astrophysics 2024)
• Gemi George (MSc in Space Science & Engineering 2024)
• Leyla Iskandarli (MAPS summer student 2024)
• Laura Corbett (MSc in Space Science & Engineering 2023)
• Victoria Thompson (MSc in Space Science & Engineering 2023
• Julio Camero (MSc in Astrophysics 2022, now PhD student at MSSL)
• Jason Wong (MSc in Space Science & Engineering 2022)
• Angharad Weeks (MSc in Space Science & Engineering 2021, now PhD student at MSSL)
• Mayssa Jamil (MSc in Astrophysics 2021)
• Yi Lu (MSc in Astrophysics 2020, now PhD student at University of Exeter)
• Ziqian Hong (MSc in Planetary Science 2020; now PhD student at Penn State University)
• Laura Millson (MSc in Space Science & Engineering 2020; now PhD student at Warwick University)
• Elina Kleisioti (MSc in Space Science & Engineering 2020; now PhD student at Leiden University)

• Confronting compositional confusion through the characterization of the sub-Neptune orbiting HD 77946
  Palethorpe, L.; John, A.; Mortier, A.; Davoult, J.; Wilson, T. G.; Rice, K.; Cameron, A. C.; Alibert, Y.; Buchhave, L. A.; Malavolta, L.; Cadman, J.; López-Morales, M.; Dumusque, X.; Silva, A. M.; Quinn, S. N.; Van Eylen, V.; Vissapragada, S.; Affer, L.; Charbonneau, D.; Cosentino, R.; Ghedina, A.; Haywood, R. D.; Latham, D. W.; Lienhard, F.; Martínez Fiorenzano, A. F.; Pedani, M.; Pepe, F.; Pinamonti, M.; Sozzetti, A.; Stalport, M.; Udry, S.; Vanderburg, A.
  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 529, 3323, April 2024. (ADS)
  
  
• TOI-544 b: a potential water-world inside the radius valley in a two-planet system
  Osborne, H. L. M. ; Van Eylen, V.; Goffo, E.; Gandolfi, D.; Nowak, G.; Persson, C. M.; Livingston, J.; Weeks, A.; Pallé, E.; Luque, R.; Hellier, C.; Carleo, I.; Redfield, S.; Hirano, T.; Garbaccio Gili, M.; Alarcon, J.; Barragán, O.; Casasayas-Barris, N.; Díaz, M. R.; Esposito, M.; Jenkins, J. S.; Knudstrup, E.; Murgas, F.; Orell-Miquel, J.; Rodler, F.; Serrano, L.; Stangret, M.; Albrecht, S.; Alqasim, A.; Cochran, W. D.; Deeg, H. J.; Fridlund, M.; Hatzes, A.; Korth, J.; Lam, K. W. F.
  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2024. (ADS)
  
  
• The occurrence rate of giant planets orbiting low-mass stars with TESS
  Bryant, E., Bayliss, D., Van Eylen, V.
  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 521, 3663. May 2023. (ADS)
  
  
• A deep radius valley revealed by Kepler short cadence observations
  Ho, C., & Van Eylen, V.
  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 519, 4056. March 2023. (ADS)
  
  
• Masses and compositions of three small planets orbiting the nearby M dwarf L231-32 (TOI-270) and the M dwarf radius valley
  Van Eylen, V.; Astudillo-Defru, N.; Bonfils, X.; Livingston, J.; Hirano, T.; Luque, R.; Lam, K. W. F.; Justesen, A. B.; Winn, J. N.; Gandolfi, D.; Nowak, G.; Palle, E.; Albrecht, S.; Dai, F.; Campos Estrada, B.; Owen, J. E.; Foreman-Mackey, D.; Fridlund, M.; Korth, J.; Mathur, S.; Forveille, T.; Mikal-Evans, T.; Osborne, H. L. M.; Ho, C. S. K.; Almenara, J. M.; Artigau, E.; Barragán, O.; Barros, S. C. C.; Bouchy, F.; Cabrera, J.; Caldwell, D. A.; Charbonneau, D.; Chaturvedi, P.; Cochran, W. D.; Csizmadia, S.; Damasso, M.; Delfosse, X.; De Medeiros, J. R.; Díaz, R. F.; Doyon, R.; Esposito, M.; Furesz, G.; Figueira, P.; Georgieva, I.; Goffo, E.; Grziwa, S.; Guenther, E.; Hatzes, A. P.; Jenkins, J. M.; Kabath, P.; Knudstrup, E.; Latham, D. W.; Lavie, B.; Lovis, C.; Mennickent, R. E.; Mullally, S. E.; Murgas, F.; Narita, N.; Pepe, F. A.; Persson, C. M.; Redfield, S.; Ricker, G. R.; Santos, N. C.; Seager, S.; Serrano, L. M.; Smith, A. M. S.; Mascareño, A. Suarez; Subjak, J.; Twicken, J. D.; Udry, S.; Vanderspek, R.; Zapatero Osorio, M. R.
  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 507, 2, 2154-2173. October 2021. (ADS)
  
  
• The orbital eccentricity of small planet systems
  Van Eylen, V.; Albrecht, S.; Huang, X.; MacDonald, M. G.; Dawson, R. I.; Cai, M. X.; Foreman-Mackey, D.; Lundkvist, M. S.; Silva Aguirre, V.; Snellen, I.; Winn, J. N.
  The Astronomical Journal, 157, 2. February 2019. (ADS)
  
  
• An asteroseismic view of the radius valley: stripped cores, not born rocky
  Van Eylen, V.; Agentoft, C.; Lundkvist, M. S.; Kjeldsen, H.; Owen, J. E.; Fulton, B. J.; Petigura, E.; Snellen, I.
  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 479, 4, 4786-4795. October 2018. (ADS)
  
  
• The occurrence of planets and other substellar bodies around white dwarfs using K2
  van Sluijs, L.*; Van Eylen, V. (*MSc student)
  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 474, 4, 4603-4611. March 2018. (ADS)
  
  
• The K2-ESPRINT Project V: A Short-period Giant Planet Orbiting a Subgiant Star
  Van Eylen, V.; Albrecht, S.; Gandolfi, D.; Dai, F.; Winn, J. N.; Hirano, T.; Narita, N.; Bruntt, H.; Prieto-Arranz, J.; Béjar, V. J. S.; Nowak, G.; Lund, M. N.; Palle, E.; Ribas, I.; Sanchis-Ojeda, R.; Yu, L.; Arriagada, P.; Butler, R. P.; Crane, J. D.; Handberg, R.; Deeg, H.; Jessen-Hansen, J.; Johnson, J. A.; Nespral, D.; Rogers, L.; Ryu, T.; Shectman, S.; Shrotriya, T.; Slumstrup, D.; Takeda, Y.; Teske, J.; Thompson, I.; Vanderburg, A.; Wittenmyer, R.
  The Astronomical Journal, 152, 5. November 2016. (ADS)
  
  
• Eccentricity from Transit Photometry: Small Planets in Kepler Multi-planet Systems Have Low Eccentricities
  Van Eylen, V.; Albrecht, S.
  The Astrophysical Journal, 808, 2. August 2015. (ADS)
  
  
• What Asteroseismology can do for Exoplanets: Kepler-410A b is a Small Neptune around a Bright Star, in an Eccentric Orbit Consistent with Low Obliquity
  Van Eylen, V.; Lund, M. N.; Silva Aguirre, V.; Arentoft, T.; Kjeldsen, H.; Albrecht, S.; Chaplin, W. J.; Isaacson, H.; Pedersen, M. G.; Jessen-Hansen, J.; Tingley, B.; Christensen-Dalsgaard, J.; Aerts, C.; Campante, T. L.; Bryson, S. T.
  The Astrophysical Journal, 782, 1. February 2014. (ADS)
  
  

Public talks

• Co-founder of Astronomy on Tap Leiden and main organizer of fifteen monthly events (2017-2018), with a typical audience of 120-200 people per event.
• Public talk: "Searching for exoplanets", Planetarium of Medellin, Colombia (video)
• Public talk: "Discovering exoplanets", Astronomy on Tap Leiden, The Netherlands (video)

Media