I am an astrophysicist studying the evolution of galaxies and quasars from the first billion years of cosmic time up to the present day.
I currently work as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Astrophysics Research (CAR) at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK.
Here, I am a member of the WEAVE-LOFAR Survey Working Group. When the WEAVE spectrograph comes online in 2022, the WEAVE-LOFAR survey will become the primary source of optical spectroscopic follow-up for the LOFAR Surveys Key Science Project, unlocking a wealth of science from these large-area radio surveys probing unprecedented depth at 150 MHz.
Before moving to Herts in September 2021 I worked at MPIA Heidelberg as part of Fabian Walter's high-redshift quasar group.
At MPIA I focused on the gaseous reservoirs which fuel the first quasars at z~6 and above, and some of my latest work compares the motion of the fuel supply (shining brightly in Lyman-alpha, measured with ESO's MUSE) to that of the cool gas inside quasar host galaxies (traced through [CII] emission - the primary cooling line of the ISM, measured with ALMA).
Curiously, we see no coherent motion between the halo and the gas inside the galaxies - the method via which these huge fuel supplies are fed to the growing galaxy and SMBH therefore remains a mystery.
Flux and motion of gas in a gaseous quasar halo (top) compared with that of cool gas in the quasar host galaxy (bottom).
Previously in my first postdoc position I worked at CRAL, Lyon, as part of the MUSE GTO team during the first years of MUSE science.
I led the study of the faint-end of the Lyman-alpha luminosity function in the MUSE Deep-Fields, and demonstrated that (given our assumptions about the escape of ionising photons, clumpiness of the IGM etc) the LAE population were capable of maintaining an ionised IGM at z~6.
The Lya luminosity function: high-redshift LAEs were capable of maintaining an ionised IGM