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Dr Steve Maddox

BA,MA,PhD

Research Fellow
Astronomy Group
Cardiff Hub for Astrophysics Research and Technology

Email
steve.maddox@astro.cf.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 (0)29 2087 6649

Overview

My research is focused on the formation and evolution of galaxies through statistical studies of galaxy surveys. I have worked on all stages of a range of galaxy survey projects: the design of surveys; the observational data collection; data reduction, database management; data analysis and the interpretation of the results.

Biography

  • Aug 2015 – present (0.5FTE), Research Fellow, Cardiff University, UK
  • Apr 2014 – Mar 2019 (0.5FTE), Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK
  • Nov 2011 – Aug 2015 Senior Lecturer (0.5FTE), University of Canterbury, NZ
  • Aug 2004 – Nov 2011, Associate Prof and Reader, Nottingham
  • Jan 2002 – Aug 2004, Lecturer, Nottingham
  • Jul 1999 – Dec 2001, Lecturer / PPARC Advanced Fellow, Nottingham
  • Jan 1997 – Jun 1999, PPARC Advanced Fellow, Cambridge
  • Jan 1993 – Dec 1996, Senior Research Astronomer, Royal Greenwich Observatory
  • Oct 1988 – Dec 1992, Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Oxford
  • Oct 1986 – Sep 1988, Postgraduate Research Assistant, Cambridge

Publications

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

Teaching

I have been teaching for 15 years and lectured on subjects ranging from introductory astronomy to advanced high-energy astrohphysics, from practical lab physics, to Fourier techniques and image processing. Most recently I contributed lectures and hands-on computing sessions for a Data Analysis module.

I have taught at the University of Nottingham, the Universtity of Canterbury, and The University of Cardiff. I hold a Post Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice awarded by the University of Nottingham.

    My research is focused on the formation and evolution of galaxies through statistical studies of galaxy surveys. I have worked on all stages of a range of galaxy survey projects: the design of surveys; the observational data collection; data reduction, database management; data analysis and finally the interpretation of the results.

    My analysis of galaxy clustering in the APM Survey (Maddox, Efstathiou, Sutherland and Loveday, 1990, MNRAS 242,43) led to one of the first recent pieces of evidence for the currently popular idea of a Cosmological constant (Efstathiou, Sutherland and Maddox 1990 Nature 348, 705). These papers have 610 and 479 citations respectively.

    I was the UK PI of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, which used the Anglo-Australian telescope to map the positions of 250000 galaxies in the southern sky. The 2dFGRS team won the Royal Astronomical Society Group Achievement Award in 2007 for our work. One of the main results from the survey was the first detection of baryon oscillations in the galaxy distribution; two team members were awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2014 for this work. The 2dFGRS description paper (Colless, Dalton, Maddox et al 2001 MNRAS 328 1039) has 1744 citations and continues to average about 100 citations per year, even 19 years after publication.

    More recently I have been working on the Herschel-ATLAS survey, which is the largest ever sub-mm galaxy survey. The consortium now includes over 160 members in over 60 institutes around the world. I was a founding a member of the H-ATLAS executive committee and leader of the large-scale structure working group.

    So far the H-ATLAS survey has produced 114 refereed journal publications with over 5000 citations.

    My main contribution to these papers has been to create the source catalogues and flux measurements used in the analyses.

    Since moving to the University of Cardiff I have continued to work on the H-ATLAS and follow-up data, including reduction and analysis of 3-D spectroscopic data and development of a Bayesian approach to fitting chemical evolution models to a wide range of observational data.

    Supervision

    I am interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of:

    • Galaxy surveys and statistics
    • Galaxy IFU analysis
    • Chemical evolution models

    Past projects

    • Co-Supervisor (33%) for Rosie Beeston
    • Co-Supervisor (50%) for Pieter de Vis
    • Co-Supervisor (20%) for Ariadna Manilla-Robles.
    • Supervisor for Magda Pietka

    Areas of expertise