Nuno Santos

Nuno Santos is currently the Coordinating Researcher at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto and researcher at the Institute for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA). In 2004, he was the main author of the paper that published the discovery of the first potentially rocky planet orbiting another star. In 2009, he was awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council, which allowed him to create a team that currently has more than 25 researchers and PhD students working in the area of Planetary Systems. In 2022 he was awarded another ERC grant (an Advanced Grant), which will allow him to develop new methods to detect other “Earths” in the Universe. Author of more than 500 scientific articles in high impact international journals, he is included in the list of “Top 2 Percent Most Cited Scientists Worldwide” since 2020, according to a study published by Stanford University. In 2010 he was one of the recipients of the Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize, for studies relating the properties of stars and their planets. He is the investigator responsible in Portugal for the ESPRESSO and ANDES@ELT projects (ESO), and for the CHEOPS and PLATO space missions (ESA).