Pierre Maxted

Biography

My first degree was in Mathematical Physics at the University of Sussex. I then did an Astrophysics PhD at St Andrews where I studied eclipsing binary stars. Following post-doctoral work in Denmark, Sussex and Southampton I came to Keele in 2001 as a lecturer.

Research and scholarship

I am an observational astronomer with expertise in the discovery and characterisation of binary star systems and extrasolar planets. From 2003 until 2020 I participated in all aspects of the WASP projects, from hardware development at the WASP-South site in South Africa to follow-up observations of the planets we discovered with this instrument. 

Since 2017, I have been a member of the science team for the CHEOPS mission. I wrote the pycheops data analysis software package that is used by the CHEOPS science team to precisely measure the size of planets orbiting nearby stars.

I am also a member of the PLATO stellar science team, responsible for finding eclipsing binary stars suitable for testing the stellar models that will be used to characterise planetary systems discovered by this mission.

Teaching

• PHY-20006 - Quantum mechanics (Module leader)
• PHY-20030 - Numerical Methods
• PHY-30029 -  Quantum mechanics  II (Module leader)
• PHY-30006 - Astrophysics Group Project and Science Communication (Module leader)
• PHY-10023 - Astrophysics laboratory