Role: PLATO Science Management coordinator, member of the PSWT

Currently a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Warwick, previously holding positions at Queen’s University Belfast, Isaac Newton Group (La Palma), Liverpool John Moores University and St Andrews. Pollacco’s research over the last 15 years has been concerned with the detection and characterisation of extrasolar planets. To this end he and his team built the WASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) Project which is still the most successful ground based detection facility and whose planets form the bulk of those with accurately known parameters.

This has led to the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) which recently moved to routine operations at Paranal, Chile. Lastly, Pollacco have spent the last decade in the PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) Project.