Professor Ian Moss (Group Leader)
My research focuses on the inflationary model of the very early universe, and the various quantum processes responsible for the origin of density fluctuations and other major features of the universe. The inflationary model has become the predominant model of the early universe as, one by one, all of its predictions have been confirmed by observation.
Dr Gerasimos Rigopoulos (Senior Lecturer)
I work on both Early Universe Cosmology (Inflation, quantum theory of inflationary perturbations and its stochastic formulation, quantum fields and implications for quantum gravity) and Late Universe Cosmology (Effective theories of cosmological perturbations, semi-analytic methods for the non-linear regime of structure formation).
Dr Paul McFadden (Lecturer)
My research interests include theoretical cosmology, holographic dualities, conformal field theory and general relativity.
Dr Danielle Leonard (Lecturer)
I am interested in testing and constraining extensions to the standard cosmological model, especially alternative theories of gravity and dynamical dark energy. To do this, I use observables which are sensitive to the growth of large-scale structure, in particular weak gravitational lensing and galaxy clustering.
Dr Joachim Harnois-Deraps (Ernest Rutherford Fellow)
I combine simulations and observations of galaxy surveys to measure cosmological parameters. I am the PI of the Scinet LIght-Cone Simulation suites (SLICS), a public series of over 1000 N-body runs ideally suited to estimate the uncertainty about cosmological measurement, including cosmic shear, galaxy-galaxy lensing, galaxy clustering and redshift space distortions — the SLICS were central to 30 journal papers to date. I am now leading the core numerical simulation programme in many international weak lensing collaborations (KiDS, LSST and Euclid). You can find a list of my publications here.
Dr Marika Asgari (Lecturer)
I am a cosmologist and study the large scale structures of the Universe. I’m interested in understanding the nature of dark matter and dark energy through modelling and analysing data from probes of the large scale structures. I am also interested in the interactions and connections between baryons (regular matter) and their dark matter environment.
Dr Markus Rau (Lecturer)
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Dr Cora Uhlemann (Visiting Professor)
I am a theoretical cosmologist working on modelling the cosmic large-scale structure in the nonlinear regime and using it to probe fundamental physics and cosmology. My research focuses on solving the gravitational dynamics of dark matter and developing galaxy clustering statistics. I am now a Professor in Cosmology at Bielefeld University in Germany.
Alex Soto (PostDoc)
I have worked on Cosmology, Inflation and features in the power spectrum and bispectrum. In addition I have worked in modifications of QFT as Lorentz violating models and PT-symmetric theories. Currently I am interested in the study of Dark Matter as a Bose Einstein condensate
Lina Castiblanco Tolosa (PostDoc)
I am looking for additional large-scale structure probes to improve our understanding of the Universe’s origin and evolution. My current research focuses on the one-point probability distribution function for galaxy clustering and weak lensing. The information content of the one-point PDF is a powerful tool for probing cosmology. I also work on modelling the galaxy bispectrum to extract information about early universe physics. Additionally, I am interested in map-level inference using persistent homology, which allows us to study the topology of cosmic structures and has shown strong potential in constraining primordial non-Gaussianity.
Kate Brown (PostDoc)
I’m predominantly interested in phase transitions in quantum systems. I’m currently using an analogue cold atom system to model the electroweak phase transition. I’m interested in how bubbles of true vacuum formed, evolved and interacted in the early universe.
Alex Gough (PhD student)
My PhD focusses on theoretical techniques in large-scale-structure formation. I work on both the gravitational dynamics side (including using ideas from quantum mechanics to model dark matter) and on how to translate these ideas into useful statistics that can be used by observers.
Nikolina (Niko) Šarčević (PhD student)
My research focuses on modelling and mitigating the intrinsic alignment of galaxies in weak lensing measurements. I am also interested in non-linear scale effects within cosmological modified gravity models and the statistical problems for late-time cosmology. My other interests include outreach, publishing and innovations in organizing academic conferences (like Cosmology from Home). I love spicy food, coffee, rodents and shopping. For more information you can check my website or follow me on Twitter.
Milos Indijn (PhD student)
My research involves numerically modelling and simulating the evolution of ultralight scalar field dark matter, or fuzzy dark matter (FDM), by taking approaches from quantum fluids and interfacing them with cosmology. Currently I am focusing on the dynamics of gravitationally bound FDM structures on galactic scales.
Beth Gould (PhD student)
My research interests are generally in cosmology and its relation to fundamental physics. For my PhD, I’m working on the formation of the cosmic large-scale structure, dark matter dynamics, and using theoretical techniques to extract information about fundamental physics from the late-time matter distribution.
Carola Zanoletti (PhD student)
My research involves testing gravity on cosmological scales by using agnostic parametrisations for modified gravity. This involves exploring parameter estimations from different observational probes and testing data by considering specific alternative theories of gravity. I will also be studying degeneracies between gravitational parameters to find accurate physical interpretations of true descriptors of theories.
Charlie MacMahon (PhD student)
My PhD is focused on developing a novel method for measuring the intrinsic alignment systematic effect in weak lensing surveys, in order to reduce the uncertainty on their cosmological constraints. To do this, I am investigating the different measurement methods used in weak lensing surveys and how they can be modified to extract high signal-to-noise intrinsic alignment measurements. With these measurements we can then test and constrain intrinsic alignment models for data processing in future lensing surveys.
Carolyn Mill (PhD student)
My PhD project focuses on how the interactions between systematic biases in our analysis of weak lensing and galaxy clustering will impact our measurements in upcoming surveys. Due to the high accuracy of these surveys, systematic uncertainties no longer hidden by statistical noise may limit our ability to constrain cosmological parameters. My project aim is to identify what combinations of systematics may cause these limitations, starting with the 3x2pt correlation function between weak lensing and galaxy clustering.
Antoine Vauterin (PhD student)
My research interests are in fundamental physics and theoretical cosmology. Specifically, I am interested in the very early universe and inflation. For my PhD, I am studying the mathematical structure of inflationary correlators using tools from holography, scattering amplitudes and conformal field theory.
Karthika Bhuvanendran (PhD student)
My research interests are in weak gravitational lensing, one of the most compelling probes of cosmology. Weak lensing measures the distortions on the shape of background galaxies by the foreground cosmic web. Specifically, I am interested in improving our understanding of the dark side of our Universe via cosmic shear analysis by deploying newly developed simulation-based analysis methods. In my research I will specialise in some of these novel analysis techniques. First, I will validate the methods on simulations, then apply the findings on the KiDS legacy data, and subsequently on the first data release of the LSST.
Matteo Canaletti (PhD student)
My research is focusing on false vacuum decay; this applies to first order phase transitions in the early universe as well as analogue gravity experiments which recently produced promising observations for testing theoretical instanton models. My interests lie in theoretical cosmology and de Sitter space.