The meeting will take place over three days, from Monday 12 January to Wednesday 14 January 2026. To accommodate arrivals, the programme will begin at 10:00 on Monday and at 09:15 on Tuesday and Wednesday.

We will be using one laptop to present all talks. All talk slots are 15 minutes long: 12 minutes speaking time and 3 minutes for Q&A. Speakers are requested to upload their slides in Keynote, PowerPoint or pdf format to this googledrive folder. Please place your file in the folder corresponding to the day you are speaking on and use a filename format Day_Surname.X (e.g. Monday_Smith.pdf). Uploads should be completed before the break that precedes the session containing the talk.

Poster presenters should note that the poster boards provided will accommodate A1 poster sizes in portrait format.

Poster presenters can present a 90 second pop-up talk and are requested to upload no more than 3 slides for their presentation to this googledrive folder. Uploads should be complete by 17:00 on Sunday 11th January 2026 to allow for collation of the slides. The file format must be pdf.

Meeting Schedule

Day 1 – Monday 12th January

10:00-10:10 Welcome and introduction — Richard Nelson (QMUL)

10:10-10:30 ESA’s PLATO mission: an overview - David Brown (Warwick)

10:30-12:30 Session: Protoplanetary discs - Chair: Farzana Meru (Warwick)

  • 10:30–10:45 DEMOS: understanding disc evolution models from observed demographics - Lorenzo Malanga (Milan)
  • 10:45–11:00 Dust growth affects the position of snowlines in protoplanetary disks - Eduard Vorobyov (Vienna)

11:00-11:30 Tea and coffee break

  • 11:30-11:45 Dust dynamics and planet formation in the inner regions of protoplanetary discs - Thomas Jannaud (Cambridge)
  • 11:45-12:00 Instabilities, waves, and turbulence in the dead-zones of protoplanetary discs - Henrik Latter (Cambridge)
  • 12:00-12:15 Multiple Facets of Hydrodynamic Turbulence in Planet-Forming Disks Across Thermal Relaxation Regimes - Hubert Klahr (MPIA Heidelberg)
  • 12:15-12:30 Transsonic accretion in transitional discs - Oliver Gressel (AIP Potsdam)

12:30–13:30 Lunch

  • 13:30-14:00 Discussion - led by Oliver Gressel (AIP Potsdam)

14:00-17:30 Session: Disc-planet interactions - Chair: Yann Alibert (Bern)

  • 14:00–14:15 Non-linear spiral waves in accretion discs - Joshua Brown (Cambridge)
  • 14:15–14:30 How two-dimensional are planet-disc interactions? - Amelia Cordwell (Cambridge)
  • 14:30–14:45 The importance of the dynamical corotation torque for the migration of low-mass planets - Jesse Weder (Bern)
  • 14:45-15:00 Migration of super-Earths in low viscosity discs - Richard Nelson (QMUL)

15:00–15:30 Tea and coffee break

  • 15:30-15:45 From inward to outward: how eccentricity in discs can change the fate of giant planets - Chiara Eleanora Scardoni (Milan)
  • 15:45-16:00 Giant planets migrating in low-viscosity discs: resonance locking, outward migration & (in)stability — Philippine Griveaud (MPIA Heidelberg)
  • 16:00–16:15 Sandwiched planet formation: restricting the mass of a middle planet — Farzana Meru (Warwick)
  • 16:15–16:30 Inferring Planet and Disc Properties from Substructures with DBNets2.0: A Deep Learning Approach to Planet Formation Diagnostics — Giuseppe Lodato (Milan)

  • 16:30-16:45 Formation of planetary cores in spontaneously generated long-lived dust traps during the secular evolution of magnetized protoplanetary disks - Timmy Delage (Imperial)

  • 16:45-17:30 Discussion - led by Richard Nelson (QMUL)

  • 17:30-17:45 Poster pop-ups

18:00–19:30 Poster session, drinks reception & snacks

Day 2 – Tuesday 13th January

09:15-11:00 Session: Planet formation and population synthesis - Chair: Richard Nelson (QMUL)

  • 09:15–09:30 A new perspective on giant planet formation — Ravit Helled (Zurich)
  • 09:30-09:45 The impact of host star metallicity as seen in the Kepler planets: planet frequencies, period ratios, and radius valley morphology Christoph Mordasini (Bern)
  • 09:45-10:00 Exploring the conditions for forming planetesimals by the streaming instability and planetary systems by pebble accretion Anders Johansen (Copenhagen)
  • 10:00-10:15 The Formation of Super Mercuries via Giant Impacts - Zoe Leinhardt (Bristol)
  • 10:15-10:30 DIPSY: A new Disc Instability Population SYnthesis - Oliver Schib (Bern)
  • 10:30-10:45 A transformer-based generative model for planetary systems — Yann Alibert (Bern)
  • 10:45–11:00 Planet formation by disc fragmentation: the impact of dust growth on opacity — Hans Lee (Leicester)

11:00-11:30 Tea and coffee break

  • 11:30-12:00 Discussion - led by Yann Alibert (Bern)

12:00–12:30 Session: Planet formation in binary systems

  • 12:00–12:15 The emerging field of planets in binaries — Julia Venturini (Geneva)
  • 12:15–12:30 The PAIRS project: results from the first synthetic S-type population — Ariana Nigioni (Geneva)

12:30–13:30 Lunch

13:30–14:15 Session: Planet formation in binary systems (continued) - Chair: Tom Haworth (QMUL)

  • 13:30-13:45 On the origin of stellar binaries, their planets, and Free Floating Planets — Sergei Nayakshin (Leicester)
  • 13:45-14:00 Robust formation channels for planets in binary systems — Luyao Zhang (Leicester)
  • 14:00-14:15 Exploring pebble and planetesimal accretion scenarios for circumbinary planets - Gavin Coleman (QMUL)

14:15–15:45 Session: The role of the planet formation environment

  • 14:15–14:30 The influence of birth environment on the formation and evolution of planetary systems: overview — Melvyn Davies (Lund))
  • 14:30–14:45 Assessing the role of external photoevaporation in protoplanetary discs — Rossella Anania (Dublin)
  • 14:45-15:00 The effect of mild- external-photoevaporation on planet formation — Paola Pinilla (MSSL/UCL)

15:00–15:30 Tea and coffee break

  • 15:30-15:45 Warped discs and late-stage infall: a new picture of planet formation? - Andrew Winter (QMUL)

15:45–17:15 Session: Dynamical evolution of planetary systems and post-main sequence systems

  • 15:45–16:00 Influence of Stellar Dynamical Tides on Mean-Motion Resonances and Resonant Chain Stability — Leon Ka-Wang Kwok (Geneva)
  • 16:00–16:15 Tidal dissipation in zeroth order 3-planet resonances and constraints on tidal parameters — Jérémy Couturier (Geneva)
  • 16:15-16:30 Tidally-driven orbital decay of hot Jupiters and possible advances with PLATO — Adrian Barker (Leeds)
  • 16:30-16:45 Linking planet formation theory and observations: insights from resonant systems and the resonantstate databases — Adrien Leleu (Geneva)
  • 16:45-17:00 Dynamical analysis of exoplanetary systems observed with CHEOPS - Aya Alnajjarine & Jaques Laskar (Paris)

  • 17:00-17:15 White dwarf planetary systems - Alexander Mustill (Lund)

  • 17:15–18:00 Discussion - led by Melvyn Davies (Lund)

Day 3 – Wednesday 14th January

09:15–10:30 Session: Planetary interior models - Chair: Christoph Mordasini (Bern)

  • 09:15–09:30 For a better understanding of planets: advances of interior models and inference tools — Caroline Dorn (Zurich)
  • 09:30–09:45 Interior and evolution of low-mass planets: the case of K2-18b - Nadine Nettelmann (Rostock)
  • 09:45–10:00 Testing the Prevalence of Hydrogen-Silicate Miscibility in Sub-Neptunes with PLATO — James Rogers (Cambridge)
  • 10:00–10:15 Evolution of Sub-Neptunes and Neptunes: Importance of the thermal conductivity — Mark Eberlein (Zurich)
  • 10:15–10:30 Icy or rocky? Convective or stable? New interior models of Uranus and Neptune and similar exoplanets — Luca Morf (Zurich)
  • 10:30-10:45 Probing planet formation with Neptune mass planets - James Owen (Imperial)
  • 10:45-11:00 Unraveling the origin of giant exoplanets: Observational implications of convective mixing - Henrik Knierim (Zurich)

11:00–11:30 Tea and coffee break

  • 11:30-11:45 Deep radiative zones in giant planets: Implications for interior and atmospheric characterisation — Simon Müller (Zurich)
  • 11:45-12:00 Modelling Stars and Planets with CESAM2k20 — Luke Gauvrit (Nice)
  • 12:00-12:15 Benchmarking Giant Planet Interior Models — Saburo Howard (Zurich)
  • 12:15-12:30 Interior inference across all planet types: The PLATO INFER Working Group — Anna Julia Poser (Berlin)

12:30–13:30 Lunch

  • 13:30-14:00 Discussion - led by Nadine Nettelmann (Rostock)

  • 14:00-16:00 Work package and working group break-out sessions

15:00-15:30 Tea and coffee break

16:00 Meeting ends

Posters

Please note that the poster boards provided will accommodate A1 poster sizes in portrait format.

Poster pop-up talks are scheduled for 17:30-17:45 on Monday 12th January. Presenters will each have 90 seconds to showcase their work and should upload no more than 3 slides in pdf format by 17:00 on Sunday 11th January.

  • The reflex instability - Nathan Magnan (Nice)
  • Modelling shadows in scattered light observations as signals from companions in protoplanetary discs - Deniz Akansoy (Cambridge)
  • Insights into early stages of disk evolution in the context of DMOST - Fabiola Antonietta Gerosa (UCL)
  • How Different Initial Conditions Can Affect the Configuration of Planetary System - Beatrice Caccherano (QMUL)
  • What is the Prevelance of Rocky Planet Atmospheres? - Richard Chatterjee (Leeds)
  • The effect of hydrodynamic instabilities on low mass migrating planets - Daniel Wanner (MPIA)
  • Thermally self-consistent models of protoplanetary discs show snowlines are constantly on the move - Alfie Robinson (Imperial)
  • The direct formation of Earth-mass cores in gravitationally unstable protostellar discs - Ken Rice (Edinburgh)
  • Gravitational Collapse of Dust Clumps in Protoplanetary Discs Sébastien Paine (QMUL)