What I do

Read my blog at  galacticturmoil.org.

I am an observational astronomer doing research and teaching with occasional forays in to developing novel astronomical instrumentation. My research interests include observational cosmology and the formation and evolutionary history of galaxies. I am a Professor at Swinburne and am leading a new group here focussed on these questions which are addressed by observations on the largest telescopes (4-8m diameter) such as Gemini, Magellan and the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT).

Some major research projects I work on include:

The Z-FOURGE imaging survey using the new FOURSTAR camera on the Magellan telescopes to measure galaxy evolution and 3D structures 11 billion years ago.

Galaxy dynamics using Integral Field Spectrographs at both low and high-redshift to use kinematics to understand the physical processes driving bulk star-formation of galaxies. This work has recently been featured in Nature.

‘WiggleZ’, which is aiming to detect Baryon Oscillations (‘Cosmic Sound’) in the galaxy distribution in the distant universe (z=1) using the AAT and use these to measure the effect of dark energy on the cosmological expansion.

The Gemini Deep Deep Survey (GDDS) has measured the evolution of galaxies over 0<z<2 using Gemini and the Hubble & Spitzer Space Telescopes,and has resulted (so far) in 9 published papers.

In collaboration with Carnegie Observatories & Durham University we have developed the LDSS3 spectrograph for the Magellan Clay Telescope. We are used this to carry out a successor to GDDS aimed at understanding the role of very low-mass galaxies (dwarfs) in cosmic star-formation at z=1.

I am always interested in contacting new PhD students so please contact me if you are interested in observational cosmology research at Swinburne.