Information for prospective applicants


Reach out if you would like to discuss projects and opportunities. For the projects and positions below, all scientific backgrounds will be considered. Candidates from minorities and under-represented backgrounds are particularly encouraged to apply.

Note that most of the projects I offer involve analysis and modeling of astronomical data, with a focus on either cosmology or Galactic astrophysics. Therefore, some experience in scientific programming and data analysis is very strongly recommended (for example in python, which is currently the language of choice in astrophysics). No specific experience is required in astronomy, cosmology, or theoretical physics, or even statistics or machine learning. But some experience or interest in at least some of those fields is strongly recommended.

Please also carefully read this page on what to expect when working with me.

PhD students

Do not be intimidated to reach out to discuss projects and opportunities. You don’t need to have a 100% specific idea of what you would like to work on. My colleagues and myself will do our best to guide you through administrative procedures. However, for more efficient discussions please nevertheless do some research on the PhD admission process in the Astrophysics group, as well as possible funding sources (STFC, President’s scholarship, etc). I am not describing specific PhD projects here, but it will most likely be in observational cosmology, and involve analysis of real data with sophisticated statistical techniques, and some theoretical modeling. For 2021 the list of available projects in the department is available here. I encourage you to contact all the potential supervisors working on topics that interest you.

MSc/MSci students

Every year I offer projects that last between 3 and 9 months, depending on the degree, and can be carried out alone or in pairs (but you will be responsible for splitting the work). All degrees are welcome. Typically, I expect the projects to attract data-minded students in the following MSc/MSci programs: Physics, Data Science, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Electrical Engineering, etc. For the requirements, see the message on top of this page. Some of the projects can also be

List of possible projects (last update Jan 2021):

Some of the projects below are complementary, so that we may have more vibrant and collaborative weekly group meetings, and students may help each other more, both directly and indirectly.

  • Uncertainty quantification:https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.10108.pdf
  • Measuring the acceleration of the solar system with Gaia EDR3 data: repeat the analysis of this paper as closely as possible, and compare with a more conventional Bayesian version of the inference.
  • Quasars in Gaia EDR3 data: reproduce the most recent Gaia quasar sample (EDR3 paper to come soon; in the meantime the DR2 paper is a good start), investigate the level of stellar contamination, and construct a new catalog of quasar candidates that is not based on cross-matching (for example using a machine learning method or a simple density model, potentially following this paper).
  • Constrain the energy density of GW with QSO astrometry: This paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.04039.pdf uses SDSS+Gaia spectroscopically confirmed QSOs. What about using the larger number density of quasar candidates from Gaia instead?
  • Testing synthetic stellar population models on Lyman Break galaxy spectra: applying the FSPS and Prospector codes to spectroscopy from a few dropout / Lyman Break galaxies (possibly from that data) to extract physical properties of interest and compare with other methods.
  • Solving astrophysics PDEs with machine learning: use the Fourier Neural Operator (a revolutionary machine learning technique for solving PDEs) on simple applications in astrophysics and cosmology, to study its applicability.
  • Quantum algorithms: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.05821.pdf
  • WDs https://github.com/SihaoCheng/WD_models
  • Forecast or constraints for kSZ projected CMB cross-correlations with quasars and dropout galaxies at 3<z<5

Postdocs

Our group can support your application for externally-funded fellowship with us. Examples include: Imperial JRF, Royal Society URF, STFC JRF, etc. Simply contact any of the staff members (including myself).