Occurence rates of exoplanets around solar-like stars. From Hsu et al. (2019) Astronomical Journal, 158, 3.

Eric Ford

Distinguished Professor and ICDS Co-Hire
Eric Ford (headshot)
Eric
Ford
He/him/his
Distinguished Professor and ICDS Co-Hire
Department Affiliations
External Affiliations
Interests
Exoplanet Surveys & Populations
Extremely Precise Radial Velocity Surveys
Orbital Dynamics & Planet Formation
Astrostatistics & Astroinformatics
Data Science for Astronomy & Astrophysics
High-Performance Computing
Life in the Universe & Astrobiology
Physics & Astronomy
Address
Website
Personal Website

Honors & Awards

  • Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics, 2020 – 2021
  • Highly Cited Researcher List, Clarivate Analytics, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
  • Research Fellow, Statistics & Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute, Spring 2017
  • Eddington Lecture, University of Cambridge & Royal Astronomical Society, 2016
  • American Astronomical Society Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy, 2012
  • American Astronomical Society Division of Planetary Sciences Harold C. Urey Prize, 2011
  • Alan H. Barrett Prize for excellence in Astrophysics at MIT, 1999

Education & Training

  • NASA Hubble Fellow, Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics, Theoretical Astrophysics Division and Institute for Theory & Computation, 2006 – 2007
  • Miller Institute for Basic Research, Fellow, University of California Berkeley, Astronomy Department, 2003 – 2006
  • Ph.D. Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton, 2003
  • S.B. Physics & S.B. Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999

Teaching

  • Astro 140:  Life in the Universe
  • Astro 416:  Data Science Applications for Astronomy
  • Astro 528:  High-Performance Computing for Astrophysics
  • Astro 589:  Seminar in Current Astronomical Research: Extremely Precise Radial Velocity Surveys
  • Abiol 590:  Astrobiology Seminar

Related Websites for Penn State Centers, Institutes, Research Collaborations & Other Affiliations

Publications

 

Publications led by Ford and Penn State Advisees

Extremely Precise Radial Velocity Surveys

  • Palumbo, M., E.B. Ford, J.T. Wright, S. Mahadevan, A.W. Wise, J. Lohner-Bottcher (2021) AJ, 163,11.

    “GRASS: Distinguishing Planet-induced Doppler Signatures from Granulation with a Synthetic Spectra Generator”

  • Zhao, J. & E.B. Ford (2022) ApJ, 935, 75.

    “FIESTA II. Disentangling stellar and instrumental variability from exoplanetary Doppler shifts in Fourier domain”

  • Luhn, J.K., E.B. Ford, G. Zhao, C. Gilbertson et al. (5 coauthors; 2023) AJ, 165, 98.

    “Impact of Correlated Noise on the Mass Precision of Earth-analog Planets in Radial Velocity Surveys”

  • Palumbo, M.L., E.B. Ford, E.B. Gonzalez, J.T. Wright, K. Al Moulla, R. Schlichenmaier (2024) AJ, 168, 46.

    “GRASS II: Simulations of Potential Granulation Noise Mitigation Methods”

  • Gilbertson, C., E.B. Ford, S. Halverson, C.H. Blake, G. Stefánsson, S. Mahadevan, J.T. Wright, J.K. Luhn, J.P. Ninan, P. Robertson, A. Roy, C. Schwab, R.C. Terrien (2023) submitted to AAS Journals.

    “Data-Driven Modeling of Telluric Features and Stellar Variability with StellarSpectraObservationFitting.jl”

  • Ford, E.B. et al. (17 coauthors; 2024) submitted to AJ. ArXiv:2408.13318
    “Earths within Reach: Evaluation of Strategies for Mitigating Solar Variability using 3.5 years of NEID Sun-as-a-Star Observations”

Exoplanet Demographcis

  • Shabram, M., B.-D. Demory, J. Cisewski, E.B. Ford, L. Rogers (2015), ApJ 820, 93.

    “The Eccentricity Distribution of Short-Period Planet Candidates Detected by Kepler in Occultation”

  • Wolfgang, A., Rogers, L.A., Ford, E.B. (2016) ApJ 825, 19.

    “Probabilistic Mass-Radius Relationship for Sub-Neptune-sized Planets”

  • Carrera, D., E.B. Ford, A. Izodoro, D. Jontof-Hutter, S.N. Raymond, A. Wolfgang (2018) ApJ, 866, 104.

    “Identifying inflated super-Earths and photo-evaporated cores”

  • Hsu, D.C.., E.B. Ford, D. Ragozzine, K. Ashby (2019) AJ, 158, 3.

    “Occurrence Rates of Planets orbiting FGK Stars: Combining Kepler DR25, Gaia DR2 and Bayesian Inference”

  • Hsu, D.C., E.B. Ford, R. Terrien (2020) MNRAS 498, 2249.

    “Occurrence Rates of Planets Orbiting M Stars: Applying ABC to Kepler DR25, Gaia DR2, and

    2MASS Data”

  • He, M.Y., E.B. Ford, D. Ragozzine (2019) MNRAS, 490, 4575.

    “Architectures of Exoplanetary Systems. I: A Clustered Forward Model for Exoplanetary Systems around Kepler's FGK Stars”

  • He, Matthias, E.B. Ford, D. Ragozzine (2021) AJ, 161, 16.
    “Architectures of Exoplanetary Systems. II: An Increase in Inner Planetary System Occurrence

    Towards Later Spectral Types for Kepler's FGK Dwarfs”

  • He, Matthias, E.B. Ford, D. Ragozzine, D. Carrera (2020) AJ. 160, 276.

    “Architectures of Exoplanetary Systems III: Eccentricity and Mutual Inclination Distributions of AMD-Stable Planetary Systems”

  • He, M.Y., E.B. Ford, D. Ragozzine (2021) AJ 162, 216.

    “Friends and Foes: Conditional Occurrence Rates of Exoplanet Companions and their Impact on Radial Velocity Follow-up Surveys”

  • He, M. & E. B. Ford (2022) AJ, 164, 210.

    “Debiasing the Minimum-Mass Extrasolar Nebula: On the Diversity of Solid Disk Profiles”

Analysis of Individual Planetary Systems with Interesting Dynamics

  • Nelson, B.E., Ford, E.B., J.T. Wright, D.A. Fischer, K. von Braun, A.W. Howard, M.J. Payne, S. Dindar (2014) MNRAS 441, 442.

    “The 55 Cancri planetary system: fully self-consistent N-body constraints and a dynamical analysis"

  • Nelson, B.E., K.M. Deck, P.M. Robertson, E.B. Ford, M.J. Payne, S.M. Pritchard, J.T. Wright, H.T. Isaacson (2016) MNRAS 455, 2484.

    “An Empirically Derived Three-Dimensional Laplace Resonance in the Gliese 876 Planetary System”

  • Jontof-Hutter, D., Rowe, J.F., Lissauer, J.J., Fabrycky, D.C., Ford, E.B. (2015) Nature, 522, 321-323.

    “Mass of the Mars-sized Exoplanet Kepler-138 b from Transit Timing”

Planet Formation

  • Carrera, D., E.B. Ford, A. Izidoro (2019) MNRAS 486, 3874.

    “Formation of short-period planets by disc migration”

  • Zawadzki, B., D. Carrera, E.B. Ford (2021) MNRAS 503, 1390

    “Rapid formation of super-Earths around low-mass stars”

  • Zawadzki, B., D. Carrera & E.B. Ford (2022) ApJ. 937, 53.

    “Migration traps as the root cause of the Kepler dichotomy.”

Statistical methodology for Analysis of Exoplanet Observations

  • Nelson, B., Ford, E.B., Payne, M.J. (2014) ApJS 210, 11.

    “RUN DMC: An Efficient, Parallel Code for Analyzing Radial Velocity Observations Using N-body Integrations and Differential Evolution Markov Chain Monte Carlo”

  • Tuchow, N.W., E.B. Ford, T., Papamarkou, A. Lindo (2019) MNRAS, 484, 13.

    “The Efficiency of Geometric Samplers for Exoplanet Transit Timing Variation Models”

  • Hsu, D., E.B. Ford, D. Ragozzine, R.C. Morehead (2018) AJ, 155, 205.

    “Improving the Accuracy of Planet Occurrence Rates from Kepler using Approximate Bayesian Computation”

  • Gilbertson, C., E.B. Ford, D.E. Jones, D. Stenning (2020) ApJ, 905, 155.

    “Towards Extremely Precise Radial Velocities: II. A Tool For Using Multivariate Gaussian Processes to Model Stellar Activity”

Review Articles

  • Ford, E.B. (2014) PNAS, 111, 12616.

    “Architectures of Planetary Systems and Implications for their Formation”

  • Hara, N & E.B. Ford (2023) Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, v10, pp 623-649.

    (invited review)

    “Statistical methods for exoplanet detection with radial velocities”

For more publications (e.g., as part of collaborations), see NASA ADS or Google Scholar