Hola! I’m a Chilean astronomer working at the University of St Andrews as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the group of Prof. Andrew Collier Cameron. I obtained my Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille of the Aix-Marseille Universite in France in 2023. Previously I earned my B.Sc and M.Sc in Astronomy degrees from Universidad de Chile, in Santiago, Chile. My research is mainly focused on the detection and characterisation of low-mass exoplanets using the radial velocity and transit techniques. Currently, I’m part of the HARPS-N, CHEOPS and PLATO consortia where I’m extending my work in the use of multi-dimensional GPs looking for ways to use new activity indicators to model stellar activity. In 2025 I was awarded the L’Óreal-UNESCO For women in science UK-Ireland Young Talent award.
For my PhD I studied the chromaticity of the stellar activity signal of M dwarfs using optical and nIR spectra from SOPHIE and SPIRou to improve the detection of low-mass planets. In particular, I lead the study of Gl 205, an early M dwarf with no planets detected but with similar stellar activity contributions in the optical and nIR RVs. For this, I modeled the activity RVs using multi-dimensional Gaussian Processes in both domains. I also led the discovery of Gl725A b, one of the closest super-Earths at only 11 light-years.
During my M.Sc, I worked looking for Transit Timing Variations (TTV) in hot Jupiters systems within the Transit Monitoring in the South (TraMoS) project. I studied three known hot Jupiters: WASP-18b, WASP-19b, WASP-77Ab combining ground-based photometry from meter-class telescopes and TESS data. Our time span of almost ten years of observations allowed us to ruled out the presence of close-in companions in resonance.
In 2018, with a marvelous group of female colleagues/friends, we founded the “Cazadoras de Estrellas” project. This project aims to travel around Chile making astronomy workshops for high school girls interested in astronomy and sciences. We have been funded through two ESO grants and in 2019, we were shortlisted in the Nature Innovating Science award.
Doing outreach especially for underrepresented groups in science is something that I enjoy very much. I spend my free time exploring the beautiful Scotland, reading novels, cooking new recipes, trying not to kill my plants, and tasting scottish whisky.