Research Area
Astronomy & Astrophysics

Research Field
Cosmology

Research Topics
Structure formation, Cosmic Microwave Background, Early Universe, High redshift galaxies, Sub-mm Observations, Astro-statistics

Physical Cosmology can be split into two major branches: the detailed study of how structure formed; and the investigation of the parameters which describe the entire Universe. My research involves several different parts of both of these branches.

In the last couple of decades we have been measuring observable quantities that describe the Universe on the largest scales, e.g. anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background, the clustering of galaxies and gravitational lensing. The most extraordinary thing that we have been learning about cosmology is that these measurements can be fit with a simple model requiring just a handful of parameters. This immediately makes us wonder why such a simple model works, why the parameters have the values they do, and how exactly the Universe grew from this simple state into the richness of astronomical objects that we see all around us today.