RESEARCH TEAM
My research team at the University of Hertfordshire (UH) works on developing computational simulations to better understand galaxy evolution.
We predominantly do this using the family of L-Galaxies simulations developed in-house.
Paurush Punyasheel
PhD candidate (UH)
Paurush works on developing the pyGalaxies simulation - a user-friendly version of L-Galaxies designed to have an intuitive python front-end and a range of synthetic observables as output.
pyGalaxies will enable the entire astrophysics community to quickly & easily model large samples of galaxies within a self-consistent physical framework.
Diederick Vroom
PhD candidate (UH)
Diederick works on implementing complex molecule formation into the L-Galaxies-C simulation using gas-grain models.
This will allow us to probe the most detailed interstellar medium (ISM) chemistry in a cosmological-scale simulation to date - an important step towards modelling life across the Universe!
COLLABORATORS
We also work closely with a number of internal and external collaborators
on various related projects.
Payel Das
Future Leaders Fellow (University of Surrey, UK)
Payel works on better understanding the chemo-dynamical evolution of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, using both observations (e.g. Gaia, APOGEE, GALAH, etc) and simulations (e.g. EDGE, L-Galaxies, and extended distribution function models).
We also collaborate on projects bridging astrophysics and biology in the PhyloGal collaboration.
Andrew Green
PhD candidate (UH, under supervision of Carolyn Devereux, Raimund Kirner, & Uwe Naumann)
Andrew works on developing L-Galaxies-AD, a highly optimised and auto-differentiable version of the L-Galaxies simulation, allowing efficient and exact evaluation of partial derivatives.
L-Galaxies-AD will enable the direct application of gradient-based Bayesian Inference (BI) when tuning simulation parameters, making calibration much more rigorous and efficient than has been possible before.
Paula Jofré
Associate professor (Diego Portales University, Chile)
Paula works on understanding stars, the candles of the Universe. In particular, how stars in the Milky Way are responsible for the production of chemical elements.
She is the leader of the PhyloGal collaboration, which applies principles of evolutionary biology (e.g. phylogenetic trees) to the study of galaxy formation and evolution.
Daniele Spinoso
PostDoc (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy)
Daniele works on developing cutting-edge prescriptions for black hole (BH) seeding and growth in the L-Galaxies-BH version of the simulation.
This BH modelling has also been integrated into L-Galaxies-C, allowing us to probe the detailed co-evolution of galaxies and their supermassive black holes (SMBHs) on cosmological scales for the first time.