University of Hertfordshire
Professor of Astrophysics
My main interests are in galaxy formation and evolution. My work combines multi-wavelength survey data (from UV to radio) with cosmological simulations and machine-learning techniques for the exploitation of large surveys (all ‘in-house’). My work has covered a wide range of topics, such as the formation of elliptical galaxies, extra-galactic star clusters, the role of mergers in influencing galaxy evolution, the impact of AGN and supernova feedback, and the evolution of dwarf galaxies.
I have been a member of the Galaxies SC since 2015. I have served as chair of the low-surface-brightness working group, co-chair of the SC, and as the Galaxies SC representative on the Rubin Contributions Evaluation Committee. I am PI of a Rubin in-kind contribution which is developing sky-subtraction algorithms for the LSST pipeline that will preserve low-surface-brightness flux, enabling LSST to access the low-surface-brightness regime. The low-surface-brightness regime, which past surveys cannot access since they are too shallow, represents LSST’s discovery space (e.g. dwarf galaxies outside the Local Group, merger-induced tidal features, intra-cluster light, Galactic streams, faint near earth objects, etc).