Methods of Detecting Exoplanets

Valerio Bozza is a researcher in the "E.R. Caianiello" Department of Physics at the University of Salerno, Italy. Dr. Bozza gained his doctorate from Salerno University in 2002 for a thesis on "Pre-Big Bang cosmology: initial conditions and brane-worlds" and subsequently undertook research at CERN's TH Unit. His fields of interest include cosmology (string cosmology, bouncing cosmologies, cosmological perturbations, brane worlds, and transplanckian effects), gravitational lensing by black holes, and microlensing (the search for extrasolar planets, binary microlensing modeling, and microlenses surrounded by gas clouds). He is the author of more than 90 scientific publications.

Luigi Mancini works as a Research Staff Scientist in the Planet and Star Formation Department of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. As a member of the HATSouth project team, his research is currently focused primarily on the search for extrasolar planets transiting nearby brightstars in the Southern Hemisphere. Dr. Mancini is also leading a project for accurate measurements of the properties of extrasolar planets via photometric observations and is involved in the GAPS (Characterizing the Global Architectures of Planetary Systems) project. He holds the Italian National Academic Qualification as an Associate Professor and is the author of approaching 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Alessandro Sozzetti is an astronomer at the Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino, INAF (National Institute for Astrophysics), Italy. He studied Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh in the USA. His main research interests include the search for and characterization of extrasolar planets, brown dwarfs, and planetary systems employing spectroscopic, photometric, and astrometric techniques and utilizing both ground-based and space-borne observatories; the formation and early evolution of stars and planets; and the characterization of planet host stars andtheir environment. He is the author of more than 120 scientific publications.