About Me

I am a Lecturer in AI and Data Science in Astronomy at the University of Southampton, and my research speciality is in applying new techniques to enormous data sets of radio observations of pulsars to understand how they behave. I work with some of the largest pulsar surveys made with the world's best radio telescopes: the Parkes Young Pulsar Array on the Murriyang telescope, and the Thousand-Pulsar-Array on the MeerKAT telescope. I'm particularly interested in population statistics, polarization, and in using pulsars as tools to probe the invisible structures of the galaxy that make up the interstellar medium (ISM).

Before coming to Southampton I was an independent research fellow, or "Fellow by Examination", at Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. Whilst there, I published works on the behaviour and origins of complex polarization behaviour in pulsar observations. I demonstrated that circular polarization, although weak, is correlated with a host of other features of pulsar emission in a way that indicates important information about what's happening in the magnetised atmosphere (magnetosphere) around the pulsar. I also came up with a model that vastly simplifies the apparently complex polarization behaviour by reparameterizing it with some new variables, to provide a straightforward method of probing emission and propagation effects around the neutron star.

I completed my DPhil in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford in 2021, focusing on understanding radio pulsars using modern broad-band observations. We can learn a lot about both neutron star physics and the ISM by investigating how pulsar radio emission varies with emitting frequency. I came up with a new statistical method of probing the three-dimensional structure of the pulsar radio beam; demonstrated the importance of simultaneously modelling intrinsic and ISM-related effects when using broad-band observations; and performed the largest study to date of how ISM structures cause scattering of pulsar radio emission.

I have a strong interest in supporting early career researchers to access opportunities in radio astronomy. In particular, my work on this is related to the upcoming SKA telescopes, as the Early Career Researcher (ECR) representative to the UK SKAO Science Committee, and chair of its ECR focus group.