My Astrophysical Research
These pages give some idea of the things I've done over the course of my (admittedly brief) research career. The following pages are fairly non-technical in nature. This is due to the lack of a sensible way of including equations in webpages. Neither the MathML nor the picture option is really satisfactory right now.
You can find more information through the links in the site index, but a brief summary is as follows: During the summer of 1999 (I was still an undergraduate at the time), I worked at Leicester University as part of the first SURE programme. I was working with Graham Wynn and James Murray on outbursts in cataclysmic variables. Since the programme only lasted for eight weeks, the experience was necessarily brief, but it taught me a lot.
Moving on, my fourth year project in Cambridge was on "Cosmic Chemical Evolution." This was an attempt to come up with a simple model, looking at the evolution of metals with redshift. My supervisor was Malcolm Longair .
After four years at the Cavendish, I was ready for a change of scenery. So I moved. Across the road. Yes, I completely failed to leave Cambridge, and just moved over to the Institute of Astronomy . Here, I worked on the problem of radiative feedback in massive star formation. My PhD supervisor was Cathie Clarke.
On completion of seven years in Cambridge, I very much felt like it was time to move on. So I moved to Stockholm, to take a postdoc as part of the EU-RTN The Origin of Planetary Systems. In Stockholm, I studied problems related to planets embedded in discs. I was also heavily involved in the Hydrocode Comparison Project. This was a worldwide project, organised under the auspices of the EU-RTN, and managed by the Stockholm node of the network. We compared the results obtained from a number of different hydrodynamics codes on a simple planet-disc interaction problem. There were a surprising number of differences, underlining the fact that computational work should not be referred to as a `simulation' but as a `numerical experiment.' This has now been published by MNRAS, and you can read it online.
After escaping the clutches of the Frozen North, I moved to Rochester, where I am currently continuing my research into planet formation. Through conversations with Eric Blackman, I have diversified into the field of winds from AGB stars, and how they are shaped by binary companions. I have also been studying Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton accretion on the side.
