Rate My Professor Heather Cegla

Heather Cegla is an Associate Professor and UKRI Future Leader Fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick, where she leads the Towards Other Earths team in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group. She earned her PhD in Astrophysics from Queen’s University Belfast in 2014 with the thesis "A Pathway to Earth-like Worlds: Overcoming Astrophysical Noise," focusing on mitigating granulation noise through 3D magnetohydrodynamical simulations of the solar surface. During her doctoral work, she identified variable gravitational redshift as a potential cm/s-level source of astrophysical noise. Cegla holds a B.S. in Physics with an emphasis in Astronomy and a minor in Mathematics from Minnesota State University Moorhead, graduating Summa Cum Laude in 2010. Her career trajectory includes Assistant Professor and UKRI Future Leader Fellow at Warwick from 2020 to 2023, CHEOPS Research Fellow at the Geneva Observatory, University of Geneva from 2016 to 2020, and Leverhulme Trust Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast Astrophysics Research Centre from 2013 to 2016. She maintains a Visiting Research Fellowship at Geneva Observatory and has research assistantships at institutions including Vanderbilt University and the University of Hawaii.

Cegla's research employs a two-pronged approach to study stellar surfaces: using transiting exoplanets to empirically probe inhomogeneities like spots, faculae, granulation, and oscillations, and validating 3D simulations to understand convection, magnetic fields, differential rotation, and their effects on radial velocity precision for detecting Earth-analogues. Her contributions have advanced techniques to overcome astrophysical noise, which ranges from 0.1 to 100 m/s and limits low-mass exoplanet confirmation. She has co-authored numerous exoplanet discoveries, including TOI-332 b: a super dense Neptune (2023), NGTS-1b: a hot Jupiter transiting an M-dwarf (2018), High-resolution transmission spectroscopy of MASCARA-2 b with ESPRESSO (2020), and An Earth-sized exoplanet with a Mercury-like composition (2018). With 4827 citations and an h-index of 38, her work appears in journals like Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and Astronomy & Astrophysics. Cegla has principal investigator time on VLT-ESPRESSO and WHT-ULTRACAM, supervises PhD students and postdocs, lectures on exoplanets and galaxies, and leads equity initiatives like Equitea and Astronomy on Tap Coventry. She is a Goldwater Scholar and member of the Royal Astronomical Society.