Speaker profile
Dr Ryan MacDonald
FRAS
Available for booking
St Andrews, Fife, Scotland
Will travel anywhere in the UK
Professional Astronomer
Academic Lecturer
Research Astronomer
Summary
Dr Ryan MacDonald is a Lecturer in Extrasolar Planets at the University of St Andrews.
Full biography
Dr Ryan MacDonald is an expert in the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars (exoplanets). He is a Lecturer in Extrasolar Planets at the University of St Andrews, where his research merges observational astronomy and theoretical astrophysics to reveal the atmospheric composition and nature of planets orbiting other stars.
He leads several programs using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to characterise exoplanet atmospheres, ranging from inferno ultra-hot Jupiters to temperate rocky planets in the habitable zone.
Before joining St Andrews, Dr MacDonald was a NASA Sagan Fellow at the University of Michigan and a Research Associate at Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
