Home     Research     Outreach     Media  

hi!

I’m a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, where I’m pursuing independent research to discover and characterize the planetary systems of nearby stars.

My main research focus is searching for and characterizing cold substellar companions, by combining direct and indirect measurements of exoplanets and brown dwarfs. With photometric observations we can constrain their thermal evolution and place preliminary constraints on the physics and chemistry of gas-giant analogs; with spectra of cold substellar objects we can understand their atmospheric physics and chemistry in detail. I’ve also spent time understanding debris disks and their interactions with giant planets, and confirming and validating new transiting planets. Take a look at my research page for more details.

Email me at matthews@mpia.de

See my publications on ADS

You can also find me on bluesky @elisabethastro.bsky.social, on LinkedIn, and on ORCID.

Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in bachelor or master thesis opportunities in Heidelberg.