ABSTRACT

The past two decades have seen major exoplanet milestones. In particular, radial velocity and transit searches have revealed a population of close-in planets: super-Earths and mini-Neptunes as well as smaller planets around late-type M-stars as TRAPPIST-1. Clearly, the architectures of these exoplanetary systems is very different from that of the solar system, raising the (formidable) question where in their history planetary systems started to diverge. Standard theories on how planets form are, however, tailored to the solar system and may be inadequate to explain the zoo of exoplanetary architectures. I will discuss some recent developments of my group, which attempt to reconcile modern planet formation theory with observational constraints: planetesimal formation around snowlines, pebble accretion, disk-planet atmosphere recycling, and star-disk magnetic interactions.

BIO
past:
2008: PhD at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands;
2008-2011: Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute
for Astronomy;
2011-2014: Hubble Fellow, University of California, Berkeley

2014-present:
VIDI Research group leader on "Origins of super-Earths planets" at the
University of Amsterdam.