I'm a researcher (associate professor) working in the planet formation group at Copenhagen University

My research is on the topic of planet formation, a branch of theoretical astronomy that focusses on the origin of the planets around our sun and other stars.

One part of my work has focused on how young protoplanets can grow in mass by sweeping up the pebble-sized solids that surround such young planets (pebble accretion: wiki, popular science article, and paper Lambrechts and Johansen, 2012). In this way, protoplanets can reach Earth-like masses, or even become as massive as super-Earths, depending on the mass available in pebbles in circumstellar discs (Lambrechts et al 2019).

I am also interested in how such protoplanets attract their gaseous envelopes, which I study using hydrodynamical simulations (e.g. Lambrechts & Lega 2017). Another area of interest is the orbital migration and the late dynamical evolution of systems of multiple planets. And more work can be found in these papers.

Taken together, these topics are important pieces of the puzzle in understanding the origin of the Solar System and help address a key question: how do planetary systems with habitable planets, like our Solar System, form? A review of the current state of this active research area can be found in this popular science article.