
SIMON BIRRER
Assistant Professor
Physics and Astronomy
simon.birrer@stonybrook.edu
Research Group Website | Personal Website
Biography
Birrer will start in January 2023 as an Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University
as a member of the Astronomy and Cosmology Group. Birrer is currently a Kavli Postdoctoral
Fellow at Stanford University (2019-2022). Before joining Stanford, Birrer was a Postdoctoral
Scholar at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (2017-2019). Birrer received
his PhD from ETH Zurich in 2016 and did his undergraduate education (Bachelor and
Master in Physics) at the same institution.
Research Statement
Simon Birrer's research focus is to probe fundamental physics on cosmological scales.
Birrer and his group are primary using gravitational lensing, a phenomena described
by general relativity, causing light to follow curved paths when traveling through
inhomogeneous matter distributions. In the strongest regime, gravitational lensing
can lead to multiple appearances of the same source and highly distorts images - know
as strong gravitational lensing. Birrer’s scientific expertise is the interface between
the exquisite data sets available on one side and the fundamental theory predictions
on the other side. Birrer’s group is actively developing open-source advanced computational
and statistical tools to extract detailed and robust information from strong lensing
about the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
For a detailed history, please click here for my CV.
Find out more about Birrer's research, teaching, software development and outreach on his personal website. For research opportunities, visit the Birrer group page. A simulation of light rays emitted by a distant galaxy that are gravitationally bent around an intervening object acting as a gravitational lens. The result is a highly distorted image known as an Einstein ring. |
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