Astronomy research

The formation of stars

My research interests cover star formation, radio and submillimetre astronomy and interferometry. The particular topics I have worked on include:

• The formation and early evolution of high-mass stars;
• Circumstellar disks and molecular outflows;
• Dynamics of molecular outflows and their influence on the surrounding cloud;
• Chemistry of star-forming regions and the relationship between dust and gas emission;
• Molecular cloud structure.

Observational methods for studying star formation

Star formation relies on using astronomical techniques at almost all wavelengths.

• Radio astronomy: ionized gas around young stars
• Millimetre and Submillimetre astronomy: cold dust and spinning molecules
• Infrared astronomy: warm dust and vibrating molecules
• Optical astronomy: ionized gas in jets and outflows, dust (by scattered light)
• X-ray astronomy: ionized gas in strong magnetic fields (on surface of star)

I mainly used radio, millimetre and submillimetre techniques to examine the cold dust emission around young stars, probe the kinematics and chemistry using emission from molecules (such as CO, NH₃, HCN, CH₃OH and a slew of other interstellar poisons!), and trace the ionized gas which arises when massive stars form or when a star pushes out a supersonic jet of material.

Publications

A list of publications from an author search at ADS.

Publications and citations at Google Scholar.

Astronomical employers

My most recent post was as the software developer for the data reduction pipeline for the SCUBA-2 submillimetre camera in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. No official research component unfortunately so I had to fit it in surreptitiously and/or rely on my coworkers to do research by proxy :-)

Previous places I worked:

• Laboratory for Millimeter-wave Astronomy at the University of Maryland, College Park (Jul 2000 to Jul 2004)
• Astrophysics group at the University of Leeds (Nov 1997 to Jun 2000)
• The (now defunct) Radio Astronomy Group at the University of Kent (Oct 1993 to Oct 1997)