Dr Ryan MacDonald

Dr Ryan MacDonald

Lecturer in Extrasolar Planets

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 3175
Email
Ryan.MacDonald@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Biography

Dr Ryan MacDonald is an expert in the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars (exoplanets). He joined the School in 2025, after completing a NASA Sagan Fellowship at the University of Michigan and serving as a Research Associate at Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute. Dr MacDonald completed his PhD in 2019 at the University of Cambridge, where he developed new Bayesian techniques to characterise exoplanet atmospheres.

Research areas

Exoplanet science raises some of the most profound questions in modern astronomy. What is the nature of worlds around other stars? Do the rocky planets in our galaxy resemble Earth, or is our blue marble an anomaly? Are we alone in the Universe?

Dr MacDonald's research at St Andrews combines cutting-edge telescope observations—such as the James Webb Space Telescope—with state-of-the-art theoretical modelling to decode exoplanet atmospheres. He is the lead developer of the POSEIDON atmospheric retrieval code, which has enabled numerous breakthroughs in exoplanet science, including:

Dr MacDonald leads several observing programs using JWST to characterise exoplanet atmospheres, whilst also being a core member of many international collaborations with access to ground- and space-based exoplanet spectra.

Students at St Andrews working with Dr MacDonald will therefore be directly involved with research at the frontier of exoplanetary science.

PhD supervision

  • Sten Vermeiren

Selected publications

 

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