Rate My Professor Heather Cegla

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.