Profile

I am from Maidenhead (west of London) but now live in Durham. My undergraduate degree was in Mathematics and Physics which I studied at the University of Warwick. Durham is really pretty and has lots of lovely pubs and cafes that I go to with my friends at the weekends.
I love going to music festivals, such as Glastonbury, and play the piano, saxophone and bass guitar.
Every year I go to Devon with my family to surf at Croyde Bay – one of the best surfing spots in the UK!

In my work, I use light at different wavelengths to explore the properties of quasars: in particular, I use radio (like the radio you listen to at home) and visible light (what our eyes see). The majority of quasars look very blue, but there is a small fraction that appear much redder which we call “red quasars”. In my research, I explore whether red quasars could be important in the evolution of galaxies.

Comparison of a red and blue quasar: the majority of quasars are blue, but we find ~10% are much redder. These red quasars could be an important phase in the evolution of galaxies.

My work typically involves coding in Python, creating graphs, and analysing quasar datasets from various telescopes. I usually have an idea (or experiment) I want to explore, and I write some code to produce the plots or numbers I need to answer my questions. This normally leads to more questions and ideas which is why I love science!
When I think I have a good result that I want to share with other Astronomers, I write a scientific paper explaining how I did my research and why my result is important.