Erik Meier Valdés

Postdoctoral research fellow
Department of Physics, University of Oxford

Characterising hot rocky exoplanets with space-based telescopes like JWST and CHEOPS. I'm particularly interested on 55 Cnc e, a super-Earth orbiting a Sun-like star every 17 hours.

Member of the CHEOPS science team
Member of the JEST collaboration
CO-I (PI: Dr. Hannah Diamond-Lowe) and champion of a target in The Hot Rocks Survey JWST program (GO 3730)
Co-organiser of the SPIMAX seminar series at the University of Oxford

Co-founder of the Exoplanet Journal Club at the University of Bern

Previously

2020-2024: University of Bern (PhD in Physics)
2018-2020: University of Bern (MSc in experimental physics, applied physics and astronomy)
2013-2018: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BSc in physics)

Full CV

Research themes

Works organized by topic.

Exoplanets

Photometry

Light emitted and reflected by exoplanets: The super-Earth 55 Cnc e

Investigating the visible phase-curve variability of 55 Cnc e
Meier Valdés et al. 2023 (A&A)
Weak evidence for variable occultation depth of 55 Cnc e with TESS
Meier Valdés et al. 2022 (A&A)
55 Cancri e's occultation captured with CHEOPS
Demory, Sulis, Meier Valdés et al. 2023 (A&A)

CHEOPS

Collaborator on the ESA CHEOPS mission (2020-Present)

CHEOPS finds KELT-1b darker than expected in visible light. Discrepancy between the CHEOPS and TESS eclipse depths
Parviainen, Wilson, Lendl, Kitzmann, Pallé, Serrano, Meier Valdés et al. 2022 (A&A)

Software

Peer-reviewed

Monitoring precipitable water vapour in near real-time to correct near-infrared observations using satellite remote sensing
Meier Valdés et al. 2021 (A&A)

Software

Code is available on GitHub!

fyodor

Computes the precipitable water vapour using satellite data above user-defined coordinates.