Tansu Daylan

Dr. Tansu Daylan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis and a faculty fellow at the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences. He leads the AstroMusers research group addressing fundamental questions about dark matter and exoplanet formation. His research combines observational astronomy with advanced statistical methods and machine learning.

Daylan holds a PhD from Harvard University (2013-2018), where he worked on dark matter detection methods at the Center for Astrophysics. He completed a double major in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Physics at Middle East Technical University (2008-2013) and contributed to the AMS-02 experiment at CERN during his undergraduate years.

His research focuses on three main areas: exoplanet discovery via TESS mission data, dark matter particle signatures through gamma-ray and gravitational lensing studies, and astrostatistical methods for robust data analysis. He participates in NASA’s ExoCore curriculum development and leads missions like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Wide Field Science investigations and the ULTRASAT flare detection pipeline.

Key honors include the LSST Discovery Alliance Postdoctoral Fellowship (Princeton, 2022–2023), TESS Postdoctoral Associate role at MIT (2021–2022), and Kavli Fellowship (MIT, 2018–2021). His work is supported by NASA, the John Templeton Foundation, and the McDonnell Center.

Daylan’s teaching includes the course Planets and Life in the Universe, emphasizing exoplanet research, astrobiology, and hands-on data analysis with TESS data. His lab’s activities span code development (GitHub: astromusers), international collaborations, and future mission concept proposals like the AXIS satellite.