Professor Isabelle Baraffe
Professor
Physics and Astronomy
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- Impact of a new H/He equation of state on the evolution of massive brown dwarfs. New determination of the hydrogen burning limit
- A new set of atmosphere and evolution models for cool T-Y brown dwarfs and giant exoplanets
- New evolutionary models for pre-main sequence and main sequence low mass stars down to the hydrogen burning limit
- Self-consistent evolution of accreting low-mass stars and brown dwarfs
Isabelle Baraffe is a distinguished Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Exeter, where she has been a faculty member since 2010. Prior to joining Exeter, Professor Baraffe held several prominent academic positions. She was a Professor of Astrophysics at the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon (CRAL) in France and served as an Associate Professor in the Physics Department at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon. Her early career included postdoctoral research at the University of Göttingen’s Sternwarte in Germany and at the Max-Planck Institut für Astrophysik in Garching, Germany.
Professor Baraffe’s research expertise lies in stellar and planetary physics and evolution, stellar hydrodynamics, exoplanets, and planetary atmospheric dynamics. Her contributions to these fields have been widely recognised, earning her several prestigious awards. She received the Lodewijk Woltjer Lecture from the European Astronomical Society in 2023, the Viktor Ambartsumian International Science Prize in 2020, and the Research Excellence Award from the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences (the University of Exeter) in 2019.
Professor Baraffe secured two Advanced European Research Council (ERC) grants, in 2012 and 2018, and several Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) grants, in 2012, 2018, and 2024. In addition to her research achievements, she led the Astrophysics Group at the University of Exeter from 2010 to 2020.