Boris Gänsicke

Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick and currently an ERC Advanced Grant Fellow. His research focuses mainly on the study of white dwarfs, the burned-out cores of stars with initial masses <10Msun. He is particularly interested in the evolution of compact binary white dwarfs, observational studies of single and binary white dwarf populations, the evolution of planetary systems beyond the main sequence, stellar atmospheres, ultraviolet astronomy and large-scale astronomical studies. He leads spectroscopic studies of white dwarfs at DESI, WEAVE and SDSS-V, which have started taking data in 2020. Over the next five years, these facilities will increase the number of spectroscopically confirmed white dwarfs by an order of magnitude. It is also a member of the ZTF-II collaboration, which provides exquisite photometry of the entire northern hemisphere, ideal for studying time-domain penannas in white dwarf systems. Spectroscopic and photometric data from more than 100,000 white dwarfs will enable extremely detailed statistical studies, as well as the identification of intrinsically rare stars that represent either extremes in physical parameter space or very short-lived evolutionary phases.