Robert Crain

Biography

I am a Reader in Theoretical Astrophysics based at the Astrophysics Research Institute (ARI) of Liverpool John Moores University. I am currently supported by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. My research focusses on the formation of galaxies, and their dynamic co-evolution with their gaseous environments. Most commonly, I approach these studies using large-scale hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy populations, conducted on world-leading supercomputing facilities. These ‘synthetic universes’ are evolved over 14 billion years of cosmic history, from the Big Bang to the present day. They are the astrophysicist’s analogue of laboratory experiments; they enable us to study the complex processes that shape the properties of galaxies and their environments, and that ultimately govern the nature of the galaxy population we observe around us. I am a core member of the EAGLE (Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments) project, and have thus played a leading role in the development, execution and analysis of the current state-of-the-art suite of galaxy formation simulations. Between 2015 and 2017, the project has yielded over 80 publications, including 2015's most-cited astrophysics publication world-wide. EAGLE was named Research Project of the Year at the Educate North awards in April 2016, and highly commended by the Times Higher Education awards in November 2016. For our research using the EAGLE simulations at the ARI, Ian McCarthy and I were awarded the 2016 Vice Chancellor's Excellence Award for Research. I am also centrally involved in the E-MOSAICS project, which incorporates models of globular cluster formation and evolution into a a truly cosmological framework, and QSAGE, a large Hubble Space Telescope survey that seeks to unveil the role of supermassive blackholes in regulating the growth of galaxies. My personal homepage is located at http://www.astro.ljmu.ac.uk/~astrcrai, where you can also find details of my extra-curricular work in the arena of stereoscopic visualisation.

Research Interest

Astrophysics