Romain Allart

Romain Allart is a postdoctoral fellow (Postdoc.Mobility from the Swiss National Science Foundation, succeeding the Trottier postdoctoral fellowship) at IREx. His area of expertise is the study of exoplanet atmospheres. He is particularly interested in their observations at high spectral resolution with instruments such as ESPRESSO, NIRPS, and SPIRou. Thanks to his expertise with visible and near-infrared spectrographs, Romain supports the exploitation of the NIRPS data on their extraction and reduction as well as their scientific analysis. In addition, he coordinates the NIRPS consortium activities to observe exoplanets’ atmospheres totaling 225 nights over the next five years. It is one of the most important observation programs in the world.

At UdeM, Romain is diversifying his field of expertise by combining high-resolution observations with low-resolution observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. Studying different atmospheric tracers at different spectral resolutions allows astronomers to have a global but also a more precise view of the composition and structure of exoplanets’ atmospheres, leading to a better understanding of their formation and evolution.

Romain Allart obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Geneva in 2020. During his thesis, he used transmission spectroscopy with different atmospheric tracers to study the different layers making up exoplanetary atmospheres. On the one hand, he demonstrated the potential of the near-infrared triplet of helium as a tracer of the upper atmosphere. Secondly, he was able to constrain the altitude of clouds in exoplanet atmospheres by combining observations from ESPRESSO and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Romain contributes to the dissemination of Astronomy to the public in Montreal via IREx events. He is also a member of the IREx Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee and the IREx Social Committee and co-organizes the Astronomie en Fût evenings in Montreal.