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I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. Previously, I was the Herchel Smith Fellow at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. I'm interested in things that go bump in the fabric of space-time (aka, black holes crashing together). I am working to answer the question of how black holes and neutron stars find each other and collide, producing the space-time ripples that we observe with detectors like LIGO and Virgo. I did my PhD at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. My PhD supervisors were Associate Professor Paul Lasky and Professor Eric Thrane. I'm an alumnus of the OzGrav organisation and a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

In both my PhD thesis and my current work, I focus primarily on things to do with the dynamical assembly of binary black hole systems. I am particularly interested in different dynamical formation environments, such as globular clusters, AGN disks, and nuclear clusters.

The parameters of a binary leave an imprint on their gravitational-wave signal, and these can give us clues to how the binary formed. Sometimes, in dynamical environments, binaries can retain significant orbital eccentricity just before they merge; this leaves its mark on the gravitational-wave signal that we detect. Along with component masses, spins and redshift evolution, eccentricity can tell us about the way that a compact object binary formed. This video is a great illustration of a three-body interaction causing a highly eccentric binary.

I was involved in developing bilby, a modular Python library facilitating Bayesian inference, optimised for gravitational wave science.

I completed my MSci in Physics at Birmingham University in the UK. I did my Master's project with Professor Andreas Freise, using Python code to model the noise at gravitational wave detectors. I helped to develop Space Py Quest, a Python code that lets you simulate your own gravitational wave detections! Its more glamorous older sister is Space Time Quest, a game with lovely graphics that lets you build and run your own detector without touching the code.

During my time at the University of Birmingham, I worked with Professor Ilya Mandel as a summer student. I worked on comparing different methods of evolving virtual stars within COMPAS, a code that simulates and analyses stellar evolution in order to work out how LIGO’s observed binaries formed. Recently, I worked with Ilya and the COMPAS team to answer another formation mystery: how X-ray binaries are made.

If you’d like to have a chat about any of the above, please get in touch!