Prof. Hugh Osborn – Researcher & Assistant Professor at the University of Bern

I’m Hugh Osborn, a researcher in astronomy. My research focuses on discovering & characterising exoplanets as they transit across their parent stars.

I am currently working as SNF starting grantee and assistant professor at the University of Bern. My research interests include the detection small, long-period planets using space-based photometric surveys, the detection of transiting dust structures around young stars and the application of machine learning to exoplanet detection.

I was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation Starting Grant in 2025 for my project the “Exo-Neptune Census” – a demographic effort to understand the compositions of Neptune-like exoplanets using masses, radii, atmospheres & architectures. This research project started in February 2026. Read more (including about job opportunities) here.

I previously held the CHESS Fellowship at both the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics (MA, USA) and the University of Bern (Switzerland). This fellowship involved the overlap of both NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite (Cheops). I also worked as a PostDoc in the group of Nobel Laureate Didier Queloz at ETH between June 2024 and Jan 2026, and on the CHEOPS instrument team as Data Analyst from Feb 2025 to Jan 2026.

As well as my involvement in TESS & CHEOPS missions, I am also the ESA Community Scientist on the PLATO Science Working Team, and an affiliate member of the Next Generation Transit Survey consortium. Since 2025 I have also served on the NASA/TESS Users Committee, as well as on the editorial board of the RAS Techniques & Instrumentation journal.

After growing up in Norwich, UK, I studied for four years at University College London (UCL) before undertaking a PhD at the University of Warwick, which I completed in 2017. I then worked as a Postdoc at the Lab of Astrophysics of Marseille (LAM) before starting my current fellowship in late 2019.

I am also a keen science communicator – through my blog Lost In Transits I write about all things exoplanetary from atmospheres to astrobiology. I run the astronomy podcast exocast (alongside Profs. Hannah Wakeford & Andrew Rushby) which has reached 100,000+ downloads. I occasionally create science videos on YouTube. I help organise Bern’s Astronomy on Tap outreach event, and have done outreach in schools in both English & French.

To contact me, please use:
hugh.osborn​@unibe.ch
or
Dr. Hugh Osborn, Physikalisches Institut, University of Bern, Gesellsschaftstrasse 6, 3012 Bern, Switzerland

Academic CV (Jan 2026) available here and a full publication list is available on ADS, on Google Scholar or using my ORCID (0000-0002-4047-4724).