News Archive 2018 - 2015

2018

International Astronomical Union Ph.D Prize

CSH Experimental Sciences Postdoc Dr. Niels Ligterink wins the 2018 Division B Ph.D Prize of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

2018/12/11

Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship

CSH Fellow Dr. Susanne Wampfler has won the 2018 Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

2018/08/27

CHEOPS Swiss event
Photo: © University of Bern / Adrian Moser

Bern's CHEOPS is flying into space soon

Professor Willy Benz explains details of the satellite to the guests in the clean room at RUAG.

2018/08/13

Iron and titanium discovered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet

For the first time, two teams of researchers from the universities of Bern and Geneva, led by Profs. Drs. Kevin Heng and David Ehrenreich, respectively, have definitively discovered iron and titanium in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. The existence of these elements in gaseous form was theoretically predicted in a companion paper led by CSH Postdoc Dr. Daniel Kitzmann. The observational discovery paper was led by PlanetS Postdoc Dr. Jens Hoeijmakers.

2018

Results of Divisons and Commissions Committees Electios

Election to Division F Steering Committee of the International Astronomical Union

Prof. Dr. Kevin Heng has been elected to a 3-year term (2018-2021) on the steering committee of Division F of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

2018

Greinacher Ph.D Prize

CSH and PlanetS Ph.D student Dr. Shang-Min Tsai has won the 2018 Greinacher Ph.D Prize awarded by the Greinacher Foundation of Bern. Dr. Tsai heads to the University of Oxford for a 4-year European Research Council postdoctoral position with Prof. Dr. Raymond Pierrehumbert.

2018

Ambizione Fellowship

CSH Fellow Dr. Maria Drozdovskaya has won the Ambizione Fellowship (2018). It is for a duration of 4 years and comes with a Ph.D student position.

2018

NASA Group Achievement Award

CSH SNF Professor Brice-Olivier Demory is part of the 2018 NASA Group Achievement Award for the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system of exoplanets.

2018

SNF Early Postdoc Mobility

CSH Ph.D student Matej Malik has won one of the 2018 Swiss National Science Foundation Early Postdoc Mobility fellowships to bring to the University of Maryland at College Park, U.S.A., where he will be a postdoc in the group of Prof. Eliza Kempton.

2018

The Gruber Foundation Fellowship

Our incoming Bernoulli Fellow (Heidelberg-Bern), Dr. Nestor Espinoza (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), has won The Gruber Foundation (TGF) Fellowship (2018), which is administered by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), to bring to the CSH. Dr. Espinoza has since accepted a permanent astronomer position at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, where the Hubble Space Telescope is administered, without taking up the second half of his Bernoulli Fellowship at the CSH.

2018/02/05

What the TRAPPIST-1 planets could look like

State-of-the-art mass measurements of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets

Led by CSH senior researcher Dr. Simon Grimm, researchers at the University of Bern obtained the most accurate estimates of the masses of the seven Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting the TRAPPIST-1 red dwarf star. Dr. Grimm performed state-of-the-art calculations that combined N-body dynamics with a genetic algorithm to analyze transit timing variations (TTVs) of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets.

2018

AAS announces its 2018 prize winners

AAS announces its 2018 prize winners

The American Astronomical Society (AAS), the major organization of professional astronomers in North America, named the recipients of its 2018 prizes for outstanding achievements in scientific research, instrument development, and writing. Prof. Dr. Kevin Heng won the Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award. This is the ninth time the award has been given out by the AAS.

2018

Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award

Prof. Dr. Kevin Heng is the 2018 recipient of the Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).

2018/01/18

Release of Report on Ultraviolet Direct Imager

Former CSH visitor Dr. Ian Parry led the proposal to ESA of a new idea for a direct imager of habitable exoplanets in the ultraviolet range of wavelengths.

2018

MERAC Funding & Travel Awards

The award, administered by the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy (SSAA), was received by three of our members. In the first call, Shang-Min Tsai received funding for the project «Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics in Exoplanets». In the second call, Marko Sestovic's project «First estimate for the true occurrence rate for planets around ultracool stars, including for earth-like rocky planets such as TRAPPIST-1» and PD Dr. Martin Jutzi's project «Japanese Hayabusa 2 space mission: exploration of the C-type asteroid Ryugu» received the award.

2017

MERAC Funding & Travel Awards

The award, administered by the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy (SSAA), was received by Dr. Maria Nikolayevna Drozdovskaya. Her project «Roots of Life - Astrobiological Imprints in Cimet and Planet-Forming Material» was awarded the funding in the second call.

2017

CSH part of LUVOIR Mission Study

Prof. Dr. Kevin Heng is now part of the Science and Technology Definition Team (STDT) of the Large Ultraviolet/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) mission study led by NASA, with representation from European members.

2017/02/22

Seven terrestrial exoplanets around a nearby star

Seven terrestrial exoplanets around a nearby star

An international team of astronomers, including Marko Seskovic and Prof. Dr. Brice-Olivier Demory of the CSH, has discovered a compact analogue of our inner solar system about 40 light-years away with the data collected from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

2017

European Research Council Consolidator Grant

Prof. Dr. Kevin Heng has won an European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant worth nearly 2 million euros. The University of Bern has two awardees, across all disciplines, in 2017.

2017

University of Bern International 2021 Ph.D Fellowship

Chloe Fisher has won one of the University of Bern International 2021 Ph.D Fellowships.

2017

Ambizione Fellowship

CSH Fellow Dr. Dan Bower has won the Ambizione Fellowship (2017). It is for a duration of 4 years and comes with a Ph.D student position.

2016

MERAC Funding & Travel Awards

The award, administered by the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy (SSAA), was received by Dr. Joao Manuel Mendoça. His project «THOR: A New and Flexible 3D Dynamical Model to Explore Planetary Atmospheres» was awarded the funding during the first call.

2016

Royal Society and Ernest Rutherford Fellowships

CSH SNF Professor Brice-Olivier Demory has won both the Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2016) and the Ernest Rutherford Fellowship (2016) of the U.K.

2016

Harold Urey Award

CSH Steering Committee Member Prof. Dr. Klaus Mezger has won the 2016 Harold Urey Award from the European Association of Geochemistry.

2016

The Gruber Foundation Fellowship

CSH Fellow Dr. Maria Drozdovskaya (Leiden University) has won The Gruber Foundation (TGF) Fellowship (2016), which is administered by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), with the CSH as the host institution.

2016

Marie Heim-Voegtlin Prize

Dr. Zoe Lehmann, jointly appointed between the CSH and the Department of English, has won the 2016 Marie Heim-Voegtlin Prize of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

2016

Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship

Dr. Brice-Olivier Demory (University of Cambridge) has won the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) Professorship with the CSH as the host institute.

2016/09/30

Rosettas Landeplatz
© Photo: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team

Rosetta’s momentous end

Rosetta’s mission is over: After the last signal at 13:20, the spacecraft was crash-landed on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, with the ROSINA instrument from Bern taking measurements right until the very end. At the University of Bern, hundreds of people watched with interest as they followed the end of one of the most successful missions of the European Space Agency (ESA) live.

2016/04/15

Bernoulli Fellowships Established

The Bernoulli Fellowships have been created by the CSH. These are 4-year joint positions shared between the CSH and its partner institutes or universities. Our inaugural partners in the Bernoulli Fellows are Oxford University and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) at Heidelberg.

2025

NCU-Delta Young Astronomer Lecturership Award

Prof. Dr. Kevin Heng was selected for the 2015 NCU-Delta Young Astronomer Lecturership Award, which is awarded, on an international basis, to scholars under the age of 45. It comes with a trophy and an invitation to deliver a series of prize lectures in Taiwan.

Delta Award Poster (PDF, 284KB)

2015

MERAC Funding & Travel Awards

The award, administered by the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy (SSAA), was received by two of our members. In the first call, Dr. Daniel Kitzmann received funding for his project «The unstable CO2 feedback cycle on ocean planets». In the second call, Matej Malik's project «HELIOS: A new open-source radiative transfer code» received the award.