Another Cosmologist for Maynooth!
A few people have contacted me to ask what happened with the research position in cosmology at Maynooth University advertised a few months ago. Well, I am now in a position to provide the answer.
I’m very happy to announce that as of January 2nd 2020, Dr John Regan has joined the staff of the Department of Theoretical Physics, bringing with him an SFI – Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) which will fund his research for five years.
Dr John Regan
John’s primary area of research is in trying to understand the formation of black holes in the early Universe and their subsequent growth and evolution. He is interested in trying to determine how the first massive black holes in the Universe formed and the conditions required to form them. The problem is well posed since at early times the Universe was a comparatively simple place compared to the Universe today. Recent observations have indicated that Supermassive Black Holes existed less than 1 billion years after the big bang (the Universe is approximately 14 billion years old). A current open problem in Cosmology is how did black holes form and grow quickly enough in order to become super-massive so early in the Universe?
In answering this question John uses high resolution numerical simulations to study the environments in which the first massive black hole seeds may have formed and then grown to become the super-massive ones we can still observe today.
I’m delighted that John has joined the Department and look forward to many years of fruitful collaborations and discussions. He will be joined by a PDRA and a research student in due course.
You can follow John on Twitter here:
Follow @jaregan
In the Dark 
January 13, 2020 at 10:37 am
I sat next to Joe Silk at the dinner on Friday. We didn’t talk about PBH’s though. He was more concerned about the complexity of getting French nationality for himself and his family (his wife, who was also there, is French).
January 13, 2020 at 1:46 pm
Yes, she is a Judge just as he is a Silk.
January 13, 2020 at 5:12 pm
It’s a wonderful language. I remember that the electron velocity distribution function is die elektronengeschwindigkeitsverteilingsfunktion which comprises the four English words individually translated and then concatenated.