Marylou Fournier-Tondreau

Marylou is pursuing her master’s degree in physics at Université de Montréal. She is now in her second year, having joined Prof David Lafrenière’s group in September 2021. She is leading two research projects aiming to characterize exoplanetary atmospheres of close-in giants, namely HAT-P-18 b and WASP-52 b, with transmission spectroscopy. The transits were observed in 2022 by the NIRISS instrument on board the James Webb Space Telescope. The transit light curves are deformed by starspot crossings. Her current work focuses on modeling those active regions to determine their properties and avoid bias in the transit depth measurements.

In the summer of 2021, she was a Trottier Summer Intern under the supervision of Prof Björn Benneke. She used unsupervised machine learning to improve the modeling of planets’ reflected light during secondary eclipses. Marylou completed her physics major at Université de Montréal in April 2021.

Previously to her journey in physics, she graduated with an undergraduate Doctor of Pharmacy and obtained a master’s degree in advanced pharmacotherapy. After a few years of practising as a pharmacist in a teaching hospital, she followed her passion for astrophysics. She was personally influenced by gender stereotypes when choosing her career in pharmacy. She is thus profoundly concerned by the importance of supporting women and other underrepresented groups in physics. Therefore, she is part of the educational program Parité sciences and the Diversité Physique (D-PHY) committee in the Department of physics. She also represents D-PHY as a team lead at the American Physical Society Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance (APS-IDEA).

Supervisor

David Lafrenière