Alexis Lavail - CV

Research expertise

Stellar atmospheres: magnetism of cool stars – particularly young stars, M dwarfs and cool evolved giants, Zeeman broadening and Zeeman Doppler Imaging
Exoplanet atmospheres: observations and characterisation using high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy
Data analysis: reduction of high-resolution spectroscopy and spectropolarimetry data, radiative transfer, bayesian statistics, MCMC
Instrumentation and observations: experience with optical & near-IR high-resolution spectrographs and spectropolarimeters (CRIRES+, ESPaDOnS, Neo-Narval, HARPS, ANDES)

2025–	Self-employed data-analyst and astronomer at my company Namzitu, job-seeker
2023–2025	Postdoc at Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP) – Université de Toulouse. 2 months FTE of parental leave
2020–2022	Thunberg fellow at Uppsala University and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. 9 months FTE of parental leave
2013–2020	PhD student in astronomy at Uppsala University and ESO Garching
2013	ESA Stagiaire at the European Space Agency ESTEC

2020	PhD degree in astronomy at Uppsala University. Title: Magnetic fields of cool stars from near-infrared spectropolarimetry
2013	Master degree in space-engineering, Observatoire de Paris, Paris
2011	Bachelor degree in Physics, Université Aix-Marseille-3 Paul Cézanne, Marseille

French: native; English: fluent; Swedish: fluent; Spanish: rusty

I am leading the reduction of all the CRIRES+ consortium guaranteed time observations: ~60 nights at the Very Large Telescope (VLT), their quality control, and the data ditribution within the consortium
I led the installation, AIT/AIV, commissioning, science evaluation, and science exploitation of the polarimeter for the CRIRES+ instrument at the VLT
Since 2023, I am the PI of the recurring observing programme of the PEPPER collaboration at the Télescope Bernard Lyot (ca. 100–200 hours per semester)

11 nights of commissioning and observing in delegated visitor mode with CRIRES+ at the VLT
7 nights in visitor mode with FIES at the Nordic Optical Telescope
4 nights in visitor mode with GIANO-B at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo

As PI

As co-I

5 hours DDT with CRIRES+ at VLT (Chile), 2025, service
97 hours with Neo-Narval at TBL (France), 2025, service
60+ nights with CRIRES at VLT (Chile), CRIRES+ GTO, 2021 – ongoing, visitor and delegated visitor
4 hours with ESPaDOnS at CFHT (Hawaii), 2019, service

Postdoc representative at the IRAP lab council 2023–2025
Representative at the astronomy division council at Uppsala University 2015–2017 & 2022
Webmaster of the Uppsala University astronomy webpages [www.astro.uu.se].
Organization of conferences and workshops (e.g Cool Stars 19, Astronomdagarna, Rencontres OSAE)

Radio appearances : Avec Sciences (France Culture), and CQFD (RTS Première)
Design and presentation of posters at popular science events in Sweden
Member of the organizing committee for the Plage aux Étoiles festival, Collioure (France)

Tanguy Franco–Silvestre. Internship (M1), 2024
Estelle Chabrol. Internship (M1), 2024
Inès Amestoy & Tanguy Franco—Silvestre. Projet d’initiation à la recherche, 2024
Jonas Zbinden. Master thesis: Planning observations of terrestrial exoplanets around M type stars with CRIRES+, 2021
Isabella Rudengren and Julia Dahlberg. Experimental characterization of focal ratio degradation of optical fibers due to various coupling technologies. Bachelor thesis, 2020
Candice Durandet. Internship on the CRIRES+ spectropolarimeter, 2017
Milan Rozel. Internship: Assembly and characterisation of the spectropolarimetric unit of the CRIRES+ spectrometer, 2017

Hiking, bouldering, beer-brewing & fermentations of every kind, cross-country skiing, baking, permaculture, cycling, world literature and music