Background credits: Composite image of gas, stars and dark matter of a LG-alike region simulated at high resolution as part of the APOSTLE project (Fattahi+, Sawala+). Made using the module Py-SPHViewer (DOI:10.5281/zenodo.21703) during my second internship at the Univ. of Victoria (Canada) under Prof. Julio Navarro supervision.
Bonjour! I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Physics & Astronomy of the University of Pennsylvania working with Prof. Robyn Sanderson.
My scientific interests are oriented towards understanding the mechanisms that drove the formation of galaxies throughout the history of the Universe. I had a multidisciplinary career with a background in telecommunication and data processing engineering allowing me to acquire crucial skills in data science, high performance computing and software development that I have applied throughout my research.
As a result, I have developped in recent years an expertise in the analysis of cosmological simulations such as EAGLE, E-MOSAICS and FIRE, in the production of synthetic observations for the Nancy Grace Roman and James Webb Space Telescopes and in the search for extragalactic high mass evolved stars. I am notably leading and contributing to the development of multiple Python based projects, including:
In parallel to my research, I am involved in outreach activities via my work in simulation rendering and in motion design. I have produced a number of simulation fly-by videos travelling through the structures of simulated universes and the galaxies they contain. Some of my creations may be viewed on my Vimeo channel, while others have been featured in a couple of planetarium shows.
I grew up in Paris where I completed my MSc at the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon as part of my training with the engineering graduate school Telecom Bretagne (now known as IMT Atlantique). I then completed my PhD thesis at the Astrophysics Research Institute of Liverpool John Moores University under Prof. Rob Crain's advising. I formerly was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Washington working with Prof. Benjamin Williams where my research has been featured in their newletter.
When not thinking about astronomy, I am a proud husband and cat-dad, a musician, a cook, a wanderer and a gamer.
Background credits: Picture taken during a hike up to the top of Mt. Albert Edward located in Strathcona Provincial Park, Canada.
| 2021- | Postdoctoral Researcher with the Galaxy Dynamics @ UPenn group at the Department of Physics & Astronomy of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. | |
| 2020-2021 | Postdoctoral Scholar on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope preliminary science at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. |  |
| 2015-2019 | PhD in Galaxy Formation & Computational Cosmology Astrophysics Research Institute (Liverpool John Moores University), United Kingdoms. |  |
| 2009-2015 | Engineer's Degree at the Graduate Engineering School (« Grande École ») in Telecommunication and Data Processing Engineering Télécom Bretagne (Institut Mines-Télécom), France. |  |
| 2013-2015 | Master's Degree in Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Engineering - Gravitational System Dynamics, (double-degree with Télécom Bretagne) Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, France. |  |
| 2009-2010 | Bachelor's Degree in Physics specializing in Astrophysics, (double-degree with Télécom Bretagne) Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France. |  |
| 2006-2009 | Preparation specializing in Mathematics and Physics for national competitive entrance exams to leading French « Grandes Écoles », Lycée Marcelin Berthelot, France. |  |
| Postdoctoral activity 2020 - now |
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| Served as panelist for the peer review of Software & Data Analysis proposals submitted to NASA's ROSES/APRA Program 2021 solicitation | ||
| Integrated the Markov chain Monte-Carlo ensemble sampler emcee in our pipeline manager software into a smart sampler cataloguing models computed by the MCMC walkers that can then interpolate models when the catalogued ones are in proximity in the parameter space. | |
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| Embedded the Fortran radiative transfer code DUSTY in a Python wrapper designed to simulate synthetic photometry of dust surrounded stars using the SVO Filter Profile Service catalogue of instrument filters. | ||
| Developed a MySQL-centralized pipeline manager software to assist the running of a pipeline that produces and analyses simulated Roman Telescope images, using techniques such as crowded-field photometry and star/galaxy separation, with Prof. Benjamin Williams at the University of Washington, Seattle, and as part of the WINGS collaboration. | ||
| Freelance 2018 | Generated rendering videos of data from galaxy formation simulations ran by Dr. Benjamin D. Oppenheimer as an independent contractor for the Fiske Planetarium of the University of Colorado, Boulder. |  |
| Outreach 2016-2018 (Ph.D.) |
Gathered a collection of visualisations, rendering data from various cosmological simulation projects during the course of my Ph.D., for Oppenheimer et al. (2016)'s press release, for the North West Astronomy Festival 2016, for the Astrophysics Exchange exhibition (2017) at the Tate Liverpool, for flyers distributed at EWASS 2018, for the planetarium StarGazing event at the World Museum Liverpool. | |
| Internship 2015 (Master) |
Delved into the optimisation from observational data of the cosmological semi-analytical model of galaxy formation GalICS 2.0 during a 4-months internship within the laboratory Galaxies, Étoiles, Physique et Instrumentation of the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon under the supervision of Dr. Andrea Cattaneo and Dr. Gary Mamon. |  |
| Internship 2014 (Master) |
Produced rendering videos of data from the future-to-be APOSTLE simulation project (Fattahi et al. 2015, Sawala et al. 2015) which uses the SPH code of EAGLE (Schaye et al. 2014) during a 3-months internship within the University of Victoria BC under the supervision of Prof. Julio Navarro. |  |
| Internship 2013 (Engineer) |
Analyzed star formation in galaxies and mergers with 8μm NASA Spitzer Space Telescope data during a 6-months internship within the University of Victoria BC and the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, under the supervision of Prof. Sara Ellison and Dr. Luc Simard. | |
| Gap year 2011-2012 (Engineer) |
Explored the possible methodologies in preparation for the phase stability validation of the interferometer KaRIn in the NASA's mission SWOT during a 1-year internship within the Centre National d'Études Spatiales, under the supervision of Dr. Alain Mallet and Dr. Francis Gizard. |  |
| Project 2011 (Engineer) |
Characterized properties of sol-gel diffractive micro-optics components under high power laser with a multilingual team of 5 people during a Télécom Bretagne scholar project under the supervision of Prof. Kevin Heggarty. | |
| Project 2010 (Engineer) |
Compared data from the project COSMIC to a model with a multilingual team of 4 people during a Télécom Bretagne scholar project under the supervision of Prof. Rolland Fleury. | |
| Student Associative 2010-2011 |
Participated in the project to implant the Ø400mm Telescope of Télécom Bretagne as the head of the Astronomy student club (contacts: Prof. Bruno Fracasso, Prof. Alain Peden). |
| Language | Advanced level | Bash, Python (+ NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, …), Matlab |
| Regular level | C, Fortran, SQL, Shell, LaTeX, Scilab, HTML, CSS | |
| Basic level | R, C++, Java, PHP, JavaScript, VHDL, CamL, IDL | |
| Software | Unix, Windows, Adobe Creative Suite, Office, Blender | |
The relationship between the morphology and kinematics of galaxies and its dependence on dark matter halo structure in EAGLE
Thob, Adrien C. R.; Crain, Robert A.; McCarthy, Ian G.; Schaller, Matthieu; Lagos, Claudia D. P.; Schaye, Joop; Talens, Geert Jan J.; James, Philip A.; Theuns, Tom; Bower, Richard G.;
ADS arXiv
The new semianalytic code GalICS 2.0 - Reproducing the galaxy stellar mass function and the Tully-Fisher relation simultaneously
Cattaneo, Andrea; Blaizot, Jeremy; Devriendt, Julien E. G.; Mamon, Gary A.; Tollet, Edouard; Dekel, Avishai; Guiderdoni, Bruno; Kucukbas, Meric; Thob, Adrien C. R.;
ADS arXiv
The relation between galaxy morphology and colour in the EAGLE simulation
Correa, Camila A.; Schaye, Joop; Clauwens, Bart; Bower, Richard G.; Crain, Robert A.; Schaller, Matthieu; Theuns, Tom; Thob, Adrien C. R.;
ADS arXiv
We investigate the connection between the morphology and internal kinematics of the stellar component of central galaxies with mass M☆ > 109.5 M⊙ in the EAGLE simulations. We compare several kinematic diagnostics commonly used to describe simulated galaxies, and find good consistency between them. We model the structure of galaxies as ellipsoids and quantify their morphology via the ratios of their principal axes, finding that kinematic diagnostics enable a superior differentiation of blue star-forming and red quiescent galaxies than morphological definitions. Flattened oblate galaxies exhibit greater rotational support than their spheroidal counterparts, but there is significant scatter in the relationship between morphological and kinematical diagnostics, such that kinematically-similar galaxies can exhibit a broad range of morphologies. The scatter in the relationship between the flattening and the ratio of the rotation and dispersion velocities (v/σ) correlates strongly with the anisotropy of the stellar velocity dispersion: at fixed v/σ, flatter galaxies exhibit greater dispersion in the plane defined by the intermediate and major axes than along the minor axis, indicating that the morphology of simulated galaxies is influenced significantly by the structure of their velocity dispersion. The simulations reveal that this anisotropy correlates with the intrinsic morphology of the galaxy's inner dark matter halo, i.e. the halo's morphology that emerges in the absence of dissipative baryonic physics. This implies the existence of a causal relationship between the morphologies of galaxies and that of their host dark matter haloes.
Paper submitted to MNRAS: links to ADS or arXiv
Poster presented at EWASS 2018 is available here
Morphological and kinematical diagnostics have been added to the public EAGLE database
Routines to compute these are available in the following GitHub repository:
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Katumba, occasionally from May 2017 to Dec 2018, Liverpool |
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Galactic Funk Militia, from March 2016 to Dec 2018, Liverpool |
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Fanfare Chaos par UpperCuite (a.k.a. CUC), from Sept 2014 to March 2016, Paris |
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Band'Arnac, from Jun 2015 to October 2015, Montauban |
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Gimmick 5 Syndicate, from Nov 2011 to Sept 2012, Toulouse |
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Les Trous Balourds (student fanfare of the ENSEEIHT), from Sept 2011 to Sept 2012, Toulouse |
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The Elephanfare (formerly known as Telefanfare - student fanfare of Telecom Bretagne), from Sept 2009 to Jan 2013, Brest |
I've started to learn music at 7 at the Music Conservatory of Chennevières-sur-Marne, France where I followed classical trumpet classes with Emmanuel Martin. Via this conservatory, I had the opportunity to enrich my training with their Harmonic Orchestra - leaded by Jean Christophe Vilain - and multiple Summer Music Course organised by Le Grenier de la Mothe in Bailleul-Neuville, France - with Fabien Norbert as a trumpet mentor. As my father simultaneously started to learn drums, I forged my sense of rythm by teaching myself how to play on his drum set. During my teenage years, I had the opportunity to experiment this need to enrich my music on a piano my parents acquired. So when I had to temporarily stop the trumpet for medical reasons at 16, I continued the piano at the conservatory with Tra Mi N'Guyen to keep up with music: this developed an interest to chord progressions I didn't have with the trumpet. 5 years later, with this background, I entered my engineering school where I joined the music student association: there with other students through regular jam sessions or via the fanfare, far away from the classical training of the conservatory, I learnt a bit of guitar and bass while improving my practice of instruments I already enjoyed to play. The years that followed saw me traveling repeatedly to multiple location where I played with people of disparat styles, from the bandas of the Basque country, and the folk of Vancouver Island to a touch of French funk, jazz, and hip hop street music. Liverpool was a significant time in my musical journey, specifically thanks to my time with the Galactic Funk Militia and numerous Open Mic nights, notably at the jazz club Frederiks. Today, all these experiences have highly influenced my taste and my style: my music is the result of these events and those people that have rythmed my past musical life.
Background credits: Picture taken by my friend Vincent Bellec during a hike in the Makhtesh Ramon located in the Negev Desert of Israel.
