Teaching

Undergraduate

In recent years, I have taught Introductory Astrophysics, shared with Catherine Heymans; a Junior Honours course in Fourier Analysis and Statistics, shared with Jorge Pennarubia; and a Junior Honours course in Observational Astronomy, as well as undertaking a wide variety of project supervision.

If you are thinking of studying Physics or Astrophysics in Edinburgh, start here. You can browse the courses we teach here.

PhD opportunities

If you are interested in an astronomy PhD in Edinburgh, start here. We offer a series of possible projects, in which PhD candidates can express interest. The offered projects for 2023 entry can be found here. The deadline has now passed, but you can get a flavour of what might be on offer next year. I offered a project on extreme quasar variability, which could be run with a data science flavour. You can read a little more about PhD research with me on the PhD page .

MOOC

Together with Catherine Heymans, I developed a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), called Astrotech: The Science and Technology Behind Astronomical Discovery. This originally ran in two sessions in 2014 and 2015, with around 36,000 students participating. Since 2016 it has run continuously in “on demand” mode.

It is a little bit different from other Astronomy MOOCs around the world, in that it is about the technology as well as the science – i.e. it tries to answer the question “how do they know that?”. It is meant to be accessible to anyone – so give it a go! You can start the course by clicking the link above.

The videos used in the course are collected here in the Edinburgh Media system. The videos are also on YouTube. Here is a wee taster:

Edinburgh University offers lots of other online courses. You can also find all sorts of open educational resources at Open.Ed